Digitization is most often considered today in mimetic terms, the faithful reproduction of a dist... more Digitization is most often considered today in mimetic terms, the faithful reproduction of a distant object, captured above all in the idea of the “page view.” In this, it is remarkably similar to the facsimile, a nineteenth-century technology applied to the reproduction of handwriting that now lives on in the reproduction of the newly auraticized print object. What I would like to argue instead is that we need a theory of reproducibility capable of accounting for the double knowledge of media difference, the quality of something having been there and having been lost. Such knowledge would imply a set of techniques for representing the lost and found of mediation, indeed for representing mediation itself rather than a notion of textual presence. It is this idea of paraphrastic presence – premised on a knowledge of material difference – that I think marks out the pivotal contribution that Goethe’s Swiss Journey makes to the history of reproducibility and that has important things to tell us as we think about designing new forms of digital reproduction. Preserving the nineteenth-century book can, in this sense, be seen as the very means through which to imagine new theories and new models of remediation in our contemporary digital environment. Practices of preservation can help us see past preservationism as our only lens of reproduction.
... be understood as initiating a complementary element of transnationalism, of similar trends ta... more ... be understood as initiating a complementary element of transnationalism, of similar trends taking place across different national spaces” (Piper 6). The ... impulses of colonialism with the newly discovered wilds of national landscapes, whether it was the Danube, Brittany, or the ...
Übrigens habe ich das Buch, wie ich schon öfter gesagt, seit seinem Erscheinen nur ein einziges m... more Übrigens habe ich das Buch, wie ich schon öfter gesagt, seit seinem Erscheinen nur ein einziges mal wieder gelesen und mich gehütet, es abermals zu thun. Es sind lauter Brandraketen! Es wird mir unheimlich dabei, und ich fürchte den pathologischen Zustand wieder durchzuempfinden, aus dem es hervorging.
the principle project of geo-graphy -the relationship of writing to space -had assumed renewed cu... more the principle project of geo-graphy -the relationship of writing to space -had assumed renewed cultural urgency. This essay explores how the printed form of the map worked in concert with the novel to reorient readers' envisioning of space and of themselves. Goethe's late novels and a number of cartographical projects from this period reveal how maps and novels participated in a larger bibliographic universe to create a new sense of space and self according to the principles of stratification, discretization, and relationality. Whereas early modern cartography's grid had stood for a scientific paradigm in which the observer's static vision was controlled by the lines on the page, divorcing it from any corporeal intimacy with the space projected, the grid for Goethe had become the preeminent sign of potentiality, of an imaginative, embodied, and relational vision of space.
Digitization is most often considered today in mimetic terms, the faithful reproduction of a dist... more Digitization is most often considered today in mimetic terms, the faithful reproduction of a distant object, captured above all in the idea of the “page view.” In this, it is remarkably similar to the facsimile, a nineteenth-century technology applied to the reproduction of handwriting that now lives on in the reproduction of the newly auraticized print object. What I would like to argue instead is that we need a theory of reproducibility capable of accounting for the double knowledge of media difference, the quality of something having been there and having been lost. Such knowledge would imply a set of techniques for representing the lost and found of mediation, indeed for representing mediation itself rather than a notion of textual presence. It is this idea of paraphrastic presence – premised on a knowledge of material difference – that I think marks out the pivotal contribution that Goethe’s Swiss Journey makes to the history of reproducibility and that has important things to tell us as we think about designing new forms of digital reproduction. Preserving the nineteenth-century book can, in this sense, be seen as the very means through which to imagine new theories and new models of remediation in our contemporary digital environment. Practices of preservation can help us see past preservationism as our only lens of reproduction.
... be understood as initiating a complementary element of transnationalism, of similar trends ta... more ... be understood as initiating a complementary element of transnationalism, of similar trends taking place across different national spaces” (Piper 6). The ... impulses of colonialism with the newly discovered wilds of national landscapes, whether it was the Danube, Brittany, or the ...
Übrigens habe ich das Buch, wie ich schon öfter gesagt, seit seinem Erscheinen nur ein einziges m... more Übrigens habe ich das Buch, wie ich schon öfter gesagt, seit seinem Erscheinen nur ein einziges mal wieder gelesen und mich gehütet, es abermals zu thun. Es sind lauter Brandraketen! Es wird mir unheimlich dabei, und ich fürchte den pathologischen Zustand wieder durchzuempfinden, aus dem es hervorging.
the principle project of geo-graphy -the relationship of writing to space -had assumed renewed cu... more the principle project of geo-graphy -the relationship of writing to space -had assumed renewed cultural urgency. This essay explores how the printed form of the map worked in concert with the novel to reorient readers' envisioning of space and of themselves. Goethe's late novels and a number of cartographical projects from this period reveal how maps and novels participated in a larger bibliographic universe to create a new sense of space and self according to the principles of stratification, discretization, and relationality. Whereas early modern cartography's grid had stood for a scientific paradigm in which the observer's static vision was controlled by the lines on the page, divorcing it from any corporeal intimacy with the space projected, the grid for Goethe had become the preeminent sign of potentiality, of an imaginative, embodied, and relational vision of space.
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Papers by Andrew Piper