Evoking McLuhan’s Juxtapositions in the Digital Age: Archaeology and the Mosaic

Abstract

The connections between our own digital age and early modern modes of thought bear resemblance to Marshall McLuhan’s method of juxtaposing the age of television with Renaissance culture. By studying early modern modes of thought, we can understand our own technological times better. But also: By critically reflecting upon contemporary technological culture, we will gain new insights into early modern aesthetics and rhetoric, and the epistemological/ontological discourses embracing them. This is a media archaeological approach, where the digital is not primarily seen as a set of gadgets, machines or electronic networks, but rather as modes of thought. While pointing out some important differences between McLuhan’s approach and media archaeology, the concept of digital epistemology also states some striking similarities—treating media as a lens, or an interface, for observing culture, history and society.

2.1 The Past and the Contemporary

This chapter was written with valuable contributions from Cecilia Lindhé .

In a video clip from the website Marshall McLuhan Speaks labeled “The Future of the Future is the Present,” McLuhan finds his answer in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida:

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, That all with one consent praise new-born gawds, Though they are made and moulded of things past …. (Shakespeare 1609, quoted in McLuhan 1967a)

McLuhan comments upon this in the following words:

The new is always made up with the old, or, rather, what people see in the new is always the old thing, the rearview mirror. The future of the future is the present, and this I something that people are terrified of. (ibid.)

Even McLuhan’s own “news,” thus, could be said to be old. Indeed, it is fair to argue that the real importance of McLuhan’s philosophy lay not in his musings about contemporary media culture, nor in his predictions about the media ecology of the future, although they may be remarkable in their accuracy. As a matter of fact, what his readers and viewers tend to interpret as “predictions” and “prophecies” often, in their striking contemporaneity, were nothing but observations. Let us also be honest and admit that the web tends to preserve those predictions (or observations) that seem accurate, but generously overlooks the vast bulk of statements that simply went haywire (see for example Wolf 1996).

Rather than being a media guru, or an electronic prophet, or the sage of the digital age, Marshall McLuhan first and last, as Elena Lamberti has reminded us, was a professor of English Literature (Lamberti 2012, 7). This observation is confirmed by a very significant feature of McLuhan’s work: not the eye to the future, but his recurring observations on history, and the ways in which he repeatedly oscillates between the past and the now, with a special fondness for the later Renaissance and Elizabethan era (and of course for modernist authors such as Joyce, Pound, Eliot and Wyndham Lewis; ibid. passim). In this light, it comes as no surprise that a comment on the future includes “the present” as well as a quote from Shakespeare.

Then again, we already knew this, having read The Gutenberg Galaxy, where the author opens his argument with an explanation of how Shakespeare’s King Lear is indeed all about the restructuring of the senses in the Elizabethan age. And we soon get a sense of why this book relies so heavily upon Shakespeare in its opening pages:

King Lear is a kind of elaborate case history of people translating themselves out of a world of roles into the new world of jobs. This is a process of stripping and denudation which does not occur instantly except in artistic vision. But Shakespeare saw that it happened in his time. He was not talking about the future. However, the older world of roles had lingered on as a ghost just as after a century of electricity the West still feels the presence of the older values of literacy and privacy and separateness. (McLuhan 1962, 14, italics added)

This, in turn, is a mere affirmation of the statement in the prologue of The Gutenberg Galaxy, where the author claims that “We are today as far into the electric age as the Elizabethans had advanced into the typographical and mechanical age” (ibid., 1). Moreover, in the early pages of Understanding Media, the author delivers a string of Shakespearian quotes, opened with the following observation:

A fairly complete handbook for studying the extensions of man could be made up from selections from Shakespeare. Some might quibble about whether or not he was referring to TV in these familiar lines from Romeo and Juliet:

But soft! what light through yonder window breaks?

It speaks, and yet says nothing. (McLuhan 1964, 9)

But McLuhan’s keen interest in Shakespearian explorations of the senses is not only a showcase of literary analysis, nor a provocative speculation, it also sets the standard for his own aesthetic and analytical approach to cultural history, which to a large extent consists in recurring juxtapositions between the electronic age and aesthetic history. Interestingly enough, this feature in his writings seems to have been somewhat overlooked (Lamberti being one major exception, dealing, however, mostly with his modernist roots), although McLuhan’s former student, and one of his most articulate critics, Donald F. Theall already in 1971 observed the following:

Paradoxically McLuhan, like Eliot, makes history important by making it here and now. Besides that, however, McLuhan also makes history important by making it the way of understanding the “now”. Without discussion of the Greeks, of the Middle Ages, of the Renaissance, and of the intervening centuries, it would not be possible to see what actually is happening in the current period. (Theall 1971, 22)

What should be noted of this historical method, though, is that for McLuhan the Elizabethan era was of interest in a paradoxical way. On the one hand, the process when Gutenberg’s invention is interiorized into the sense apparatus of Western Man is very much like the process we “now” (in the 1950s and 1960s, that is) experience with the rapid increase of electronic communications. But on the other hand, this restructuring of our senses is completely different in the Elizabethan era and our own: the distance of the eye and the separation of mechanics fostered by Gutenberg’s innovation versus the intimacy of the tactile media and the inclusion of the Global Village (famously represented by television, which in McLuhan’s view is an audio-tactile medium).

Within the broad field of media archaeology, McLuhan’s philosophy has had a major, but even here somewhat overlooked, importance. When McLuhan is recognized as one of the founding fathers of media archaeology, it is more likely his observations of the materiality of media that are mentioned, while a philosopher like Michel Foucault often is credited with the theoretical framework pertaining to the historical aspects (the “archaeology” of media archaeology). But it is fair to say that many aspects of media archaeological historiography are rooted in McLuhan’s work as well. To clarify this, it is useful to return to some aspects of the media archaeological field.

2.2 McLuhan, Media Archaeology and Historiography

The heterogeneous perspectives gathered under the media archaeology banner could be said to have in common a historical focus on the materiality of communication, combined with a (Foucauldian) critique of established lines of historical developments, including genres, epochs and norms. The archaeological attitude can also be understood as a reaction to, and fatigue with, the hermeneutic paradigm that has dominated the academic discourse for almost 200 years. It comes as no surprise (from a media archaeological point of view) that this fatigue is expressed side by side with the development of databases, web browsing and the new possibilities for arranging material in new and productive ways. Media archaeology, then, not only is a useful tool for describing digital epistemology, the theory in itself is actually a congenial expression of this concept.

One of Foucault’s lines of argument is that the categories utilized to describe the progression of cultural history—epochs, genres, -isms and so on—are not a set of given parameters (Foucault 2002, passim). On the contrary, these parameters have emanated from and established power relations, sorting out which objects fit “history” and which do not. A counter-reaction to these tendencies is to regard history as an agent in contemporary times and, vice versa, to observe history through the lens of our contemporary media (Lindhé 2013). This strategy may have its modernist roots in the aesthetics of, for example, T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein, but it is obvious that digital tools and resources facilitate this deconstructive practice. In the introduction (Chap. 1) other strategies for establishing alternative histories were mentioned, such as the purely archaeological interest in unsuccessful or forgotten technologies of communication, as well as exploring moments rather than epochs or the progression of history, and, finally, operating with juxtapositions over a smaller or wider time span.

There are obvious connections between many features of media archaeology and McLuhan’s media philosophy. But it is important also to note some striking differences between the media archaeology of today and McLuhan’s historical determinism. Where McLuhan’s version of history with few exceptions was the history of the fittest, and the story of the dominant technologies (the technological, rather than natural selection), his historiographic narrative—regardless of the frequent juxtapositions—also was the history of History (with a capital “H”). His aim was not to question the progress of history, but to put a different, yet radical, angle on the events as they occurred in this History. By stressing the importance of media as an agent of change, McLuhan rewrote the history of communications without altering or challenging its evolutionary narrative. This is important enough, though, and if he did not pay very much attention to the failures of (or in) communication history, it was simply because they, in his view, did not promote enough societal and sensorial change.

Within the field of media archaeology, however, as stated in Chap. 1, major attention is directed to the forgotten or failed technologies of the past, be it Betamax videos from the 1980s or optical signal systems from the mid-nineteenth century. This interest, of course, is driven not only out of curiosity, but also for ideological reasons; inspired by for example microhistory, many media archaeologists will put forward alternative and foreseen agents in the history of communications and of social life (if not necessarily social change, on a larger scale). It could also be seen as a strategy to deconstruct the tendencies of technological determinism fostered in the media philosophies of the Toronto School.¹

Media archaeological juxtapositions, then, may serve different purposes than in McLuhan’s work: sometimes just to avoid the ideological tendencies of historical evolution. But then again, juxtapositions are sometimes utilized in almost the same way as in McLuhan’s work: to mirror different epochs and expressions, and to highlight surprising similarities, as well as to stress important differences.

2.3 Strategies and Juxtapositions

This is the point where McLuhan and media archaeology both converge with digital epistemology. As mentioned in the first chapter, to approach digital culture from an epistemological point of view means to shift focus from the technology itself to artworks and to the order of things and archives. Instead of exploring big data, databases or tablets, smartphones, applications, networks and other material and technical expressions of digital culture, focus lies on more abstract relations, such as on how literature and art, philosophy and theory somehow correspond to the digital challenge without necessarily mentioning or describing it. In short, digital epistemology means a shift of the figure/ground relationship of digital culture.

The figure/ground concept McLuhan derived from ambiguous images used in Gestalt psychology, like the famous Duck/Rabbit or the well-known image with the facial profiles that also form a vase. When McLuhan uses this concept, he wants to point out how, for example, the shift from the description of the content of the media to the medium itself implies such a change in perspective where the foundation and the figure change place. In the same way, accepting digitization as a lens is a shift in how we relate to contemporary culture. “The digital,” then, does not primarily consist of objects or tools, but rather indicates a perspective—a perspective shift, even.²

In order to further clarify what digital epistemology could mean in analytical practice, we can mention some strategies which, as their common denominator, have the use of digital culture as a “lens,” rather than as an object or tool (Lindhé 2013). The list is by no means exhaustive, but is rather primarily an indicator of what this perspective can generate:

• 1. Reading history in the light of digital culture. That is: Are there certain relations that could be established if we look at history from a digital point of view? Does post–World War II history have a digital materiality that affects how we look at happenings in the past?

• 2. Reading analog literature and art as if they were electronic texts. That is: What happens if we analyze for example a nineteenth-century print novel in terms of embodiment, processes, performativity, materiality and even “software,” or other buzz concepts in the short analytical tradition of cybertexts and digital culture? Will this encourage a focus not on what an artwork means, but what it does?

• 3. Relating literary texts and artworks to digital history. That is: What does it mean to relate cultural artifacts to the communicational and organizational logic that has been put forward—in different ways—by digital technology since the 1950s?

• 4. Explore digital expressions as related to early modern (and premodern) modes of thought. That is: What is the effect of using digitization as a “lens” through which you explore new dimensions of old concepts, genres and cultural artifacts? How can we explore parallels and interconnections between digital expressions and early modern modes of thought; and between digital culture and genres that were popular before the Romantics, before modernity? By emphasizing these qualities within the electronic culture of today, we might discover new aspects of early modern expressions and genres such as salon culture; the archival “principle of pertinence ”; the cabinet of curiosities; the emblem, and others. But we might also, and likewise importantly, discover new aspects of digital objects and artworks.

In the concluding pages of this chapter, only the two final approaches will be taken into consideration. What all these aspects of digital epistemology do have in common, though, is that the digital is regarded as a mode of thought, rather than as a set of gadgets, machines or electronic networks. To clarify the argument, let us take a brief look at a few juxtapositions between digital and early modern expressions.

2.3.1 Salon Culture versus Social Media

Salon culture was an informal yet well-structured meeting place for intellectuals, flourishing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Conversations and confidences shared space with tableaux vivants, lectures, readings, musical entertainment and political intrigues. Salon culture favored the conversation, the diary, the letter, the oral and private genres. You could describe it as an informal channel for culture and information, an early modern file-sharing system.

Usually the hosts of these gatherings were women, and experiments with roles, gender, sexual ambiguity and identity were encouraged. In short, the salon—where art, politics and cultural analyses mix with the private and subjective—shares many characteristics with social media such as blogs and vlogs, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Twitter: confidences, social and sexual role-playing, informal conversations, online diaries, home recordings, intellectual and political discussions and agitations are shared online in more or less closed communities.

As these similarities encourage further research, it is important also to note important differences. For example, while many social media are actively administrated and their members chosen by invitation or acceptance of their request to join, the social control of the salon was a completely different affair: class, status and cultural positions made all the difference in this environment, while class and status probably will not stop you from interacting with Facebook and Instagram.

Observing these similarities and differences, it is fair to assume that by approaching salon culture through the lens of social media, and social media through the lens of salon culture, we will gain new insights into both phenomena.

2.3.2 The Principle of Pertinence and the Mosaic of McLuhan

It is interesting to note that many aesthetic expressions, as well as many features of our digital culture (consciously or—more likely—not), seem to adhere to the principle of pertinence, briefly mentioned in Chap. 1 (and further explored in Chap. 3). Before the principle of provenance – with its emphasis on origin and verifiable kinship – became the guiding principle of modernity, applied to archives and museums, the principle of pertinence was the archival practice that governed the order of things³ This order—also called the subject order, or dossier system—archived items according to likeness, subject and themes. It is an archival arrangement that may, to our eyes, convey an unstructured impression, but at the same time it offers a more creative and challenging structure and this arrangement seems congenial to how we actually handle information in our digital everyday lives. The etymology behind this archive principle is telling: pertineo translates in the Lewis and Short Dictionary (Lewis and Short 1849) as “to reach, extend” and “to belong, relate, concern, pertain or have reference to, affect”—a more horizontal, associative and mosaic pattern. These distinctive features could obviously be related to McLuhan and his notion of the mosaic structure of his own texts. As Lamberti observes: “McLuhan uses his mosaic to question traditional ideas of knowledge and to move the reader from a linear (logical, ordered, exclusive) to an acoustic (non-logical, simultaneous, inclusive) perspective” (Lamberti 2012, 32). The expression Lamberti here termed “traditional” could, in the present context, rather be termed “post-romantic” or “modern” (as in “modernity”). McLuhan’s own practice, his inviting and juxtaposing style, challenges, just like the principle of pertinence, the logical, dualistic and linear order that modernity had made the standard mode of thought of Western knowledge.

2.3.3 Electronic Literature versus the Renaissance Emblem

How does the logic of the webpage, electronic literature, memes or computer games relate to the genre of the emblem? Just like the digital in digital epistemology, the emblem and the cabinet of curiosities were not simply genres or forms, they were modes of thought (see Chap. 1, and the following chapters). Repeating John Manning’s observation that “[t]here was literally nothing under the sun that was not emblematic – at least potentially” (Manning 2002, 130), it is notable that our environment (artificial or not) is once again—or, is always already—filled with significance. The success of Pokémon Go a few years ago is a striking example, as is the ever-expanding plethora of augmented reality (AR) apps, where old ruins can be virtually restored to their former glory just by directing your smartphone to the site. The same can be said of most computer games, where every item, every pixel, is fueled with possible importance. A proverbial conclusion in McLuhanesque language could sound like this: the diegetic discourse of the ludoverse is emblematic.⁴

As mentioned in Chap. 1, the emblematic mode of thought encouraged combination and composition, a call to create rather than to interpret. It is not difficult to observe this emblematic structure, as well as the emblematic mode of thought, in works of electronic literature, computer games and—even—in the very structure of most webpages. Electronic texts, such as Johannes Heldén’s The Prime Directive or J.R. Carpenter’s The Gathering Cloud, display the same iconic structure as the emblematic emblem: pictura, inscriptio, subscriptio (Heldén 2006; Carpenter 2016). And the mode of thought, to combine and compose, and initializing a thought process rather than revealing something completed, is in line with emblematic epistemology (and—it must be said—so is a lot of traditionally written poetry too, but then again, many poems are indeed emblematic). The same applies to webpages and memes: the combination of inscriptio, pictura and subscriptio represents the very form of the internet. Memes often display a very intricate combination of text, sound and visual elements, and moreover, like the emblem, often allude to contemporary myths and beliefs (it is common that memes challenge taken-for-granted assumptions in politics or popular culture). And while many webpages may have self-contained and rather unenigmatic content, they do (mostly) point out a direction, if not to God or a higher morality, at least to other webpages, or to the new gods and jurors—advertisers, social media.

2.4 Interface. Mosaic

As indicated by the above, digital epistemology is a concept applied to approach digital culture as a lens, or an interface, vis-à-vis early modern and premodern aesthetics, genres and works of art. Interestingly enough, in The Gutenberg Galaxy McLuhan uses the notion of interface in a way that actually is a misunderstanding of the concept. But then again, this mistake leads him to a conclusion that coincides with vital aspects of digital epistemology:

Two cultures or technologies can, like astronomical galaxies, pass through one another without collision; but not without change of configuration. In modern physics there is, similarly, the concept of “interface” or the meeting and metamorphosis of two structures. Such “interfaciality” is the very key to the Renaissance as to our twentieth century. (McLuhan 1962, 149)

McLuhan’s mistake transforms this quote to a media archaeological object in itself. The “interface” McLuhan is referring to is certainly something other than today’s “interface.” The Swedish translation (by Richard Matz 1967b) used the word “interfas” (“interphase”), but if you search for that term on the web you will stumble upon articles on cell cycles. The English word “interface,” though, has a wider meaning and leads to, among other topics, physics. The Encyclopedia Britannica states:

Interface, surface separating two phases of matter, each of which may be solid, liquid, or gaseous. An interface is not a geometric surface but a thin layer that has properties differing from those of the bulk material on either side of the interface.

Apparently, an interface is something that separates matter. It is not about systems that collide or pass each other, but the place where different functions meet and to some extent are delimited. That the data industry adopted the concept of interface to describe the zone that both separates and unites users and machines, software and hardware seems logical. But the concept that McLuhan most likely was looking for is interference. Encyclopedia Britannica again:

Interference, in physics, the net effect of the combination of two or more wave trains moving on intersecting or coincident paths. The effect is that of the addition of the amplitudes of the individual waves at each point affected by more than one wave.

So, then, what shall we do with this information? The wrongful uses of interference, interface and interphase could be puns, as they appear in the works of Imri Sandström, which we will explore in the coming chapter. McLuhan’s mistake, though, opens up a very productive perspective for the media archaeologist. McLuhan’s interface, then, becomes an intersection between historical and contemporary discourses; the metamorphosis of history when observed through the lens of communications media. Media, then, work as interfaces, not only in relation to the immediate content, but also to the study (and use) of history.

When Elena Lamberti probes “the literary Origins of Media Studies,” she directs her attention mostly to McLuhan’s modernist influences. And quite rightly so—McLuhan’s mosaic definitely goes back to the aesthetics of Pound, Eliot, Joyce and Lewis. But then again, what they did in turn was to bring the early modern, premodern and antique culture to their own times—What might have been and what has been //Point to one end, which is always present, as T. S. Eliot points out in “Burnt Norton.” Modernism may, after all, emanate from “interfaciality”—that is, from the method of historical juxtapositions—and the mosaic is a very congenial (and emblematic) form to present them.

Finally, to operationalize the media archaeological juxtapositions discussed above, we will end this chapter by looking at two works that explore digital technology as well as analog nostalgia. In various ways they juxtapose media historical impacts that at once affirm McLuhan’s historical gaze, and the media archaeologist’s interest in materiality and margins.

2.5 Hegnhøj and Essvik. Materiality and Analog Nostalgia

The Enemies of Books is a small book written by William Blades and first published by Trumner & Co. in London in 1881. The book also exists in an exclusive new edition, and we shall return to it soon. Blades is listed on the title page also as the author of The Life and Typography of William Caxton. This Caxton, in turn, is known for having printed the first book in the English language in 1471—The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troyes—and for having developed a typeface that survived in modified form even into our day. However, the book The Enemies of Books, as the title suggests, describes a series of phenomena that, in concrete terms, threaten the material existence of books. William Blades (1824–1890) himself was a typographer, publisher and book collector, and had a great interest in book history and typography.

So then: Who are the enemies of the book? Blades lists them chapter by chapter: fire; water; gas and heat; dust and neglect; ignorance and narrow-mindedness; bookworms; other insects; and, finally, bookbinders and collectors—no, not even his own trade is free from accusations.

Next to the new edition of Blade’s adorable book, I have a box sealed with a rubber band. On the band someone wrote, in Danish: “FORSIKTIG – INDEHOLDER POETSNE,” which translates to: “CAUTION – CONTAINS POETS’ SNOW.” The box has the same color as beige wrapping paper, and a label on the front gives us a title in typed capital letters: ELLA ER MIT NAVN VIL DU KØBE DET? (ELLA IS MY NAME WOULD YOU BUY IT?) (Hegnhøj 2014). On the reverse is a similar label with the publisher’s note: “These are Ella’s left notes, as we found them in the Private behind the secondhand bookstore in a box under Ella’s bed.” If you open the box you find almost 140 typewritten sheets with a band around it. And here we also find “poet’s snow”—circular clippings from a classic hole puncher.

The events described in this prose lyrical children’s and teen novel revolve around Ella, whose very poignant account emerges in typewritten diary sheets as an ongoing work in progress, with an almost relentless sad tone of loss. The old cliché of the “found manuscript” reinforces the impression of something lost, almost even before the reading began: What happened? Why has anyone found this? Does the one who wrote this still live? (The real author, Mette Hegnhøj, thankfully is alive and kicking). The narrative describes Ella, who lives behind a secondhand bookstore run by her mother. Ella wants a cat. And suddenly a cat emerges, a lost little rascal that the girl takes for her own and calls Kattekismus (Catechismus) after Luther’s catechism—from which Ella ripped pages to make paper rats. But after nine days, Kattekismus disappears: “Without cat after with cat /is worse than /without cat before with cat. /I know that now” (Fig. 2.1).

Fig. 2.1

Mette Hegnhøj, “Catechismus, Come back!” (From Ella er mit navn, vil du købe det? 2014)

Ella’s mother claims that her daughter was affected by asthma caused by the cat, but she herself thinks it is the books she is allergic to. In growing frustration, the girl attacks her mother’s antique store with a hole puncher—and creates the “poetic snow” that comes with the box. The reader may guess the gloomy truth about the cat’s disappearance, but Ella lives in hope. And hidden in this hope is also the longing for a lost father. Mette Hegnhøj’s poetic text establishes the sentimentality of loss, not only through the lyrical prose sheets, but also in the materiality that Ella er mitt navn exhibits. The author is said to have used nine different typewriters to create the book, so it is not a matter of digital manipulation. Also, the box’s “poet’s snow” is mechanically made—these really are punch clippings.

The typewriter and hole puncher represent an office and paper culture that we have more or less left behind.⁵ These are tools that at their appearance had the potential of positioning women in an initial stage of emancipation, because a woman could enter the labor market as a typist, but at the same time she was so underpaid that she had to work very hard if she did not have the luck to be married. The office, nevertheless, represents increased social mobility for women at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth, a fact that Friedrich Kittler discusses in his familiar Dracula essay—and that is also described as a process with obstacles, in Swedish author Elin Wägner’s fine debut novel Norrtullsligan from 1908 (translated as Men and Other Misfortunes 2002; Kittler 1997; Wägner 2002). Ella’s typewriter, in contrast, describes a voluntarily chosen enclosure, because after the cat’s disappearance she refuses to go out. Only when she seems to have produced enough poet’s snow does she leave home. The final word of the narrative is “Ella?” followed by a last typewritten sign bearing the book’s title: “Ella is my name. Do you want to buy it?”

The cat’s name, Kattekismus, addresses the Danish title of Dr. Martin Luther’s catechism: Katekismus and Den lille katekismus. Considered from a media archaeological perspective, this is more than a pun—Luther’s reformation is intimately associated with the establishment of the printing press: “I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing,” Luther preached. “And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, I did nothing; the Word did everything” (Luther 1522). Moreover, the theses the reformer according to tradition nailed on the church door in Wittenberg find a resonance in the signs and proclamations Ella very innovatively creates, mostly with the x-key on her typewriter: “IN A WAR THE BOOK WILL DIE,” for example (Fig. 2.2). She finds a little note in the bookstore: “Ordered goods, it said on the receipt. /And kitten. /Sold is sold Ella.” The mother thus claims that she sold the cat and by so doing she buys herself the forgiveness of sins, the receipt being a (probably falsified) letter of indulgence. The literal disintegration of Luther’s catechism strengthens the bond between cat and child, and also calls into question an anthropocentric humanism that puts the relationship between humans first, and emphasizes the links between literal education and learned knowledge—where Luther’s Small Catechism long served as the eye of the needle. But Ella becomes an enemy of books and produces poet’s snow.

Fig. 2.2

Mette Hegnhøj, “IN A WAR THE BOOK WILL DIE” (From Ella er mit navn, vil du købe det? 2014)

Yes. Let us return to The Enemies of Books. My copy is thus a new edition, published by Rojal Förlag, in Gothenburg, Sweden (Essvik 2018). Behind this small publishing house we find the artist and bookbinder Olle Essvik, who in several different projects merges the digital with the tactile; cultural history meets new technology. Rojal’s edition of Blade’s book is accompanied by a small booklet describing the process of creation. As a bookbinder, Essvik searches the internet for books on books, and finds a very expensive copy of William Blade’s book in a British antique store. The artist orders the book, scans the pages and prints the sheets. Essvik is searching the web again, this time for descriptions of bookbinding machines. He starts from these and constructs a bookbinding apparatus, the parts of which he prints on a 3D printer. With this machine, he binds 200 copies of the book and sells it as a conceptual work of art. An expression, if you so wish, of love for the book’s enemies. Many people believe that the very concept of digitizing is an enemy to the book, but what we are witnessing here is how digital technology is specifically used to maintain a craft which is gradually languishing. Media history as a media archaeological loop.

Hegnhøj and Essvik, two literary projects that in different ways deconstruct the classic book format—one by using typewriters and putting the book in a cardboard box together with punch clippings; the other by recreating an antiquarian book using a scanner and a 3D-printed bookbinding machine. Hegnhøj does not flirt with digital culture; on the contrary, the production process is strikingly analog (or non-digital)⁶—nine typewriters, real punches, papers in a box, rubber cord. But it is still our own contemporary age of digitization that give a special nimbus to Hegnhøj’s method. Of course, the workload would have been more or less the same, and the narrative content of the story would have been interpreted in a similar way, if Ella er mit navn had been published 30, 50 or 75 years ago. But as an artistic and tactile expression, our digital environment is decisive for how the text is perceived.⁷ Essvik’s strategy for merging digitization and cultural history is of a completely different nature. With great zeal he explores (in several projects) the relationship between new technology and old crafts, or constructs computer games of Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka.⁸

In both cases, we are dealing with expressions of what we today call “analog nostalgia”—a concept that mainly circulates in postdigital and media archaeological research (and which we will explore further in Chap. 3). This fascination for the analog can be expressed in the reuse of various retro techniques, for example—as in Hegnhøj’s and Essvik’s works—by emphasizing the paper and the book as media with certain material qualities, or reproducing sounds of crackling vinyl on sound recordings. Analog nostalgia should not be seen as an escape from our digital age, but rather as paying attention to the materiality that has always characterized all media expressions, from the embodiment of the ancient rhetoric and the tactility of the codex to digital culture’s at once virtual and presence-creating tendencies.

Today’s technologies, thus, can become tools for reapproaching history, and actually rewriting it, in ways both McLuhan and media archaeology have suggested—although their approaches to this rewriting probably would differ. Both Hegnhøj’s and Essvik’s works offer us the opportunity to reflect upon media history and media materiality, and thus they point out something important: that juxtapositions constitute the pedagogical core of digital epistemology (Fig. 2.3).

Fig. 2.3

Olle Essvik, pictures describing the making a new copy of William Blade’s book with a binding machine constructed with the help of a 3D printer (From The Enemies of Books 2014)