Start Making Sense? -The Question of Interpretation under the Condition of Technology’s Ongoing Provocation
The Princeton-Weimar Summer School for Media Studies – a collaboration between Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie, IKKM1) and Princeton University (German Department2) – returns to Princeton in 2016 for its sixth installment. 2016’s session will be concerned with the question of interpretation under the conditon of technology’s ongoing provocation of the humanities. Is it possible to understandtechnology? Is it possible to conceive of a non-human agency of understanding? Can machines/animals/materials interpret our Dasein? How can we understand our own reading if reading is no more an exclusively human activity? What is the difference between writing and implementation? What are the “objects” that we should address and analyze as “technical objects” (Gilbert Simondon)?
The Princeton-Weimar Summer School for Media Studies 2016 will map out approaches to technology from the point of view of a posthumanistic study of media culture. Of particular interest are two paradigms: The analysis of actual media usage, and the study of cultural techniques, which connects to the archaeology of the humanities-technology-relationship by studying the material operations that are (though often suppressed) at the basis of the arts and the concepts that formed the core of humanities.
The summer school will be directed by Bernhard Siegert (Weimar) and Nikolaus Wegmann (Princeton). The faculty will also include Claus Pias (Lüneburg) and Gabriele Schabacher (Weimar). The keynote to the Princeton-Weimar Summer School for Media Studies 2016 will be given by Jonathan Sterne (Montreal).
The Princeton-Weimar Summer School for Media Studies invites applications from outstanding doctoral candidates throughout the world in media studies and related fields such as film studies, literary studies, philosophy, art history, architecture, sociology, politics, the history of science and visual culture.
All application materials3 should be sent by email to ikkm-conference[at]uni-weimar.de