Culture, Technology, Cultural Techniques – Moving Beyond Text1 (original) (raw)

Culture, Technology, Cultural Techniques - Moving Beyond Text1

Theory, Culture & Society, 2013

Originally published in 2003, this article presents one of the first attempts to provide a systematic summary of the new concept of cultural technique. It is, in essence, an extended checklist aimed at overcoming the textualist bias of traditional cultural theory by highlighting what is elided by this bias. On the one hand, to speak of cultural techniques redirects our attention to material and physical practices that all too often assume the shape of inconspicuous quotidian practices resistant to accustomed investigations of meaning. On the other hand, cultural techniques also comprise sign systems such as musical notation or arithmetical formulas located outside the domain of the hegemony of alphabetical literacy. The rise of the latter in particular is indebted to the impact of the digital – both as a domain of technology and a source of theoretical reorientation. Together, these aspects require a paradigmatic change that challenges and supersedes the traditional ‘discursivism’ o...

Introduction: Which Culture?

2017

The first chapter highlights the confusing plurality of meanings attached to the notion of culture. While it is used in increasingly many contexts, giving rise to the idea of an ongoing ‘culturalisation’, a range of new materialists and antihermeneutic posthumanists have sought to undermine the centrality of culture, meaning, interpretation and mediation. The book structure is explained: Chapters 2– 5 in Part I summarising the main concepts of culture, presenting their meanings, uses and limitations; Chapters 6– 8 in Part II scrutinising the contestations in structuralism, science and technology studies and media archaeology; and Chapters 9– 11 in Part III reconstructing sustainable foundations for a ‘post-antihermeneutic’ concept of culture, defending the idea of meaning-making practices of communication and mediation, while attentively learning from the critiques.

The Concept of the Cultural Sign A Theoretical Revision

The concept of the sign developed in two versions over the last century. Both of these are predicated on the assumption that there is a relationship between content and form. This concept has formed the basis for most models of communication theory, semiotic theory, and social theory in the form of symbolic interactionism. What the concept of the sign fails to do, however, is to reveal the underlying assumptions underlying these relationships of content and form. It is far more complex and the unraveling of this complexity is the basis for this essay. It is argued that instead of treating form and content as belonging to the same semiotic space, they need to be separated into two different philosophical domains, epistemology and ontology. There are two connections between these two. One of them creates ontological forms (structural epistemology) and the other interprets them within the context of an epistemological system (structural hermeneutics). In addition, it is argued that within this philosophy of structural communication, linguistic codes are never neutral. They are value-laden.

Material idea: on the legibility of culture

2014

What we call "the real" is also the result of a protocol of reading. Such a reading is unavoidably historical and contingent, as a product of a specific temporary sense. It also stands within a complex correlation of marked and unmarked spaces, therefore in a spatial sense too. But this latter framework also carries the evidence of time. Such "marks", taken as individual projections or choices, are not only constantly changing, according for instance to the daylight (or nocturnal illumination, or twilight palettes), to the instant temper or mood, to the physical conditions and the cultural antecedents of the perceiving and exposing subject – to sum up, according to a whole package of conditions and circumstances. If we put together the myriads of individuals on the global surface, we constantly have to redraw the lines of intersection and re-read the mappings of an interactive geography made of partly individual options, partly mimetic movements. Like ruins, view...

“Lire en numérique / Digital Readings”, Biens symboliques / Symbolic Goods, 7, 2020

Biens symboliques / Symbolic Goods, 2020

[English below] Les écrits sur le numérique et ses effets sur la culture sont nombreux, mais insuffisants pour qui veut tenter de comprendre ce que le numérique fait à la lecture littéraire ordinaire. De nombreux discours, optimistes ou inquiets, pointent les possibles ouverts par les nouveaux supports ou les menaces qu’ils font apparaître. Les neurosciences semblent pouvoir conforter les deux positions, selon l’interprétation qu’elles font de leurs données ; elles n’offrent souvent qu’une compréhension limitée en n’intégrant guère les variations sociales des usages et en replaçant peu les usages dans une pratique et dans un contexte. Les sciences de l’information et de la communication se concentrent plus largement sur les dispositifs, les usages et usager·ère·s qu’ils supposent ou favorisent, que sur leurs appropriations réelles. Les statistiques publiques mesurent des usages sans pouvoir en rendre compte. Ce dossier de Biens symboliques entend réinscrire la lecture dans les perspectives offertes à la fois par l’histoire du livre et par les sciences sociales. Pour sortir de débats largement idéologiques qui opposent les anciens et les modernes, il se propose de réunir des enquêtes empiriques qui à la fois distinguent les supports et sont attentives aux variations sociales entre les usages. Le dossier s’ouvre par un entretien avec Roger Chartier qui situe la lecture numérique dans le temps long de l’histoire de l’écrit et interroge la rupture que le numérique a opérée dans l’ordre des livres. Trois enquêtes sociologiques sur des pratiques de lecture ordinaire mettent ensuite cette interrogation à l’épreuve du terrain : qu’est-ce qui change dans le passage de l’imprimé aux écrans pour les lecteur·rice·s socialisé·e·s dans l’ordre des livres qui deviennent des adeptes du support numérique, testent un dispositif de prêt de liseuses ou au contraire n’imaginent pas du tout transposés en numérique les profits qu’ils tirent du livre papier ? Le dossier explore enfin quelques usages propres permis par le numérique, de pratiques savantes ordinaires qui passent par l’usage de corpus numérisés à des pratiques de lecture/commentaire d’une production littéraire de bande dessinée nativement numérique. Si « métamorphose du lecteur » il y a, selon l’expression de Pierre Assouline, où se situe-t-elle ? Sans prétendre en préciser toutes les facettes, ce dossier vise à montrer l’intérêt de l’enquête empirique sur une question qui a fait couler beaucoup d’encre mais reste largement ouverte. Despite the growing number of writings on digital technology and its effects on culture, they remain insufficient if we wish to understand what effect digital media has on ordinary literary reading. Whether optimistic or concerned, the discourse tends to point out either the possibilities opened up by new mediums or the threats they represent. Neuroscience appears to support both positions, depending on how data are interpreted; it usually offers only a limited understanding, as it seldom integrates social variations, and rarely places use within the framework of a practice and context. Information and communication sciences are more concerned with devices and the uses and users they presuppose, or favour, rather than their actual use. Public statistics measure uses without being able to account for them. This Symbolic Goods dossier sets out to reintegrate reading into the perspectives offered by both the history of books and social science. Moving away from the mainly ideological debates that pit old against new, it wishes to unite empirical studies that identify mediums while also taking social variations into consideration. This dossier starts with an interview with Roger Chartier, who situates digital reading in the long-term context of the history of writing, and questions the rupture that digital technology has brought about for books. Three sociological investigations on ordinary reading practices then put this question to the test through fieldwork. What changes when a text passes from print to screen; or for readers socialized in the order of books who become digitally adept and try out an e-reader device, or conversely cannot imagine that the advantages of paper books could be transposed digitally? The dossier finally explores some actual uses that digital technology permits, from ordinary erudite practices which use a digitized corpus, to reading/commenting practices of an originally digital graphic novel literary production. If one can indeed speak of the “metamorphosis of the reader,” an expression coined by Pierre Assouline, where is this situated? Without claiming to cover all aspects, this dossier aims to show the benefits of empirical study on a question about which much has been written, but that remains largely unanswered.

The Interpretation of Documents and Material Culture

This chapter is concerned with the interpretation of mute evidence-that is, with written texts and artifacts. Such evidence, unlike the spoken word, endures physically and thus can be separated across space and time from its author, producer, or user. Material traces thus often have to be interpreted without the benefit of indigenous commentary. There is often no possibility of interaction with spoken emic "insider" as opposed to etic "outsider" perspectives. Even when such interaction is possible, actors often seem curiously inarticulate about the reasons they dress in particular ways, choose particular pottery designs, or discard dung in particular locations. Material traces and residues thus pose special problems for qualitative research. The main disciplines that have tried to develop appropriate theory and method are history, art history, archaeology, anthropology, sociology, cognitive psychology, technology, and modern material culture studies, and it is from this range of disciplines that my account is drawn.