Review: Iuraşcu et. al., ‘Friedrich Kittler: Operation Valhalla’
Review of Ilinca Iuraşcu, Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz’s (eds.) Friedrich Kittler: Operation Valhalla. Writings on War, Weapons, and Media (Duke University Press 2021), 312 pages.
Abstract
Friedrich Kittler's collected works about the reciprocity between war and media technology, recently published in Operation Valhalla, Writings on War, Weapons, and Media, contain 18 translations by the editors Ilinca Iuraşcu, Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz. The persuasive translations and the convincing introduction will undoubtedly spark readers’ interest in current topics including drones, cyberwar, surveillance techniques, and virtual war simulations. Kittler does not directly address such recent issues, but his texts, published between 1981 and 2017, provide a media-theoretical framework for the critical investigation of these issues. Kittler's work is deeply relevant to the constitution of media theory as an independent discipline in German academia, and his translated works have also enriched discussions in various fields worldwide for several decades. This volume continues to increase this global discourse with excellent translations by an occasionally controversial but undoubtedly significant media theorist.
Reviewed by Fabian Lorenz Winter
The volume Operation Valhalla. Writings on War, Weapons, and Media is a compelling selection of Friedrich Kittler's related writings, translated into English and edited by Ilinca Iuraşcu, Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz. This collection of 18 writings by German media theorist Friedrich Kittler (1943–2011) emphasizes the close reciprocity between war and media technology and their recursion of the so-called media technological apriori, as Kittler proclaims in his famous work “Grammophon, Film, Typewriter” (Kittler, 1986, 1999). The thoughtful selection and consistently persuasive translation of Kittler's articles, 12 of them translated into English for the first time, bring together his decades-long preoccupation with media technology as war technology. Two texts, "Manners of Death in War" and "Playback: A World War History of Radio Drama," have been published here exclusively.
Furthermore, this anthology reveals the inspiring eclecticism of Kittler's detailed inquiries, all related to his argument of media-technological evolutions and disruptions. For example, Operation Valhalla collects texts about the history of firearms and searchlights, the Blitzkrieg, media and drugs in World War II, and numerous other topics. Among other works, the 1999 lecture “Playback: Weltkriegsgeschichte des Hörspiels,” was translated by Michael Wutz and published for the first time as “Playback—A World War History of Radio Drama.” It is convincing in its topicality, and the current discourse will benefit from this prudent translation. To summarize this lecture (a “Parforceritt” familiar to Kittler readers), Kittler extrapolates the short media history of radio drama, especially in correlation with war and as war technology in WWI, WWII, and the Cold War from different perspectives, including those of Nietzsche, Brecht, and Welles. This condensation leads to both fantastic single-lines like "World wars are essentially media wars" (105) and to apt analyses of historical media experiences; such analyses can be updated to address concerning current themes like cyberattacks, killing drones, virtual war simulations and network-centric warfare: "What radio drama after World War I comes down to is this: to reproduce the mortal dangers of warfare through simulation, comedy, or playback. By means of mine explosions, which projected the enemy's function onto the natural world, the new broadcast medium was cultivating its audience. The demobilization of 1919 had turned hundreds of thousands of military radio operators into eventual broadcast consumers, if they hadn't had the good fortune, as some did in the United States, to set up commercial stations. To play back the soundtrack of a war that had truly revolutionized people's sensory perception and consciousness was therefore the most elegant way for the new communications medium to attract a public" (99–100).
In addition to the interpretations of the experienced translators Winthrop-Young (e.g., Bertuch and Kraus, 2016; Siegert, 2015; Vismann, 2008) and Wutz (e.g., Krämer and Bredekamp, 2013; Macho, 2013), Iuraşcu presents an accurate and detailed translation of Kittler's “Ottilie Hauptmann.” With this translation, she provides a stage for Kittler’s seldom-discussed text about Goethe’s Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities). Iuraşcu's translation refers to the original text (Kittler 1981) and includes passages Kittler added 10 years later (1991); the two are typographically separated by bolding the later additions. This decision makes sense, as the editors understand the text sources as genealogical forerunners of the translation presented in the interestingly named section “Love and War.” As the preface makes clear, Kittler’s revision of Goethe's text "that originally had little to do with war or with military matters" (VIII) is a prime example of the persistent oscillation "between love and war, education and mobilization, or the marital and the martial" (VIII).
The translations of Kittler’s collected writings appeared in six sections of varying length and complexity. Footnotes, directly on the page or at least at the end of each chapter, not only in a separate appendix, may have been the personal preference of the reviewer; however, the footnotes often feature exciting and illuminating short commentaries and are highly recommended to read too. Overall, the design of the volume can be described as successful, and it essentially considers the essence of the critical content. In cases where the section headings do not directly relate to central aspects of the subsequent texts, one may wish for a concise preface by the editors regarding how the exciting titles like “Vanishing Animals and Returning Nomads,” or “Wires, Waves, and Wagner” correlate to the following texts. The editors argue for their decision to omit introductions to each chapter with a "fairness to Kittler, [because] a quick summary of the texts will not do, especially one that comes with critical objections. Though Kittler was neither a professional soldier nor a military historian, he was a lifelong aficionado who acquired an in-depth knowledge of Prussian and German military matters. To explain, extend, and occasionally challenge his analyses, it is necessary to go into detail and meet him, as far as possible, on his own ground" (VII–VIII). In addition to the aforementioned footnotes, the appendix includes a suitable bibliography and a comprehensive index. The latter illuminates Kittler's distinct vocabulary in order to examine war technology and media technology, including the words “cable,” “Heimat,” and “V-2 rocket” (287–294). The volume is therefore also suitable for systematically accessing and reading Kittler’s writings collected within.
The translations in this book will undoubtedly stimulate English-speaking media studies and humanities, provoking discussion on topics including the ongoing preoccupation with war and media and will increase Kittler’s general reception in the Anglosphere. Winthrop-Young’s thoughtful and detailed introduction to the anthology surely provides the latter. Over the course of 50 pages, Winthrop-Young, a renowned Kittler expert and a distinguished translator of several other major German-language media theory works, discusses Kittler's texts and their reception along with critique, wittiness, and scientific-historical classifications. Though the translations that follow Winthrop-Young’s introduction lack separate commentary, his detailed preface more than makes up for this absence. In addition to other topics, Winthrop-Young’s introduction concentrates on “war as a motor of media history” (3–9), “mobilized men and dismembered women” (9–22), and Germany as “Blitzkrieg nation” (27–35). Winthrop-Young concludes that "readers of this collection will encounter a theorist engaged in a large-scale polemodicy, an attempt to do justice to war. Just as early modern theodicies tried to justify the goodness of God in the face of worldly (read: human) evil, polemodicies justify wars by showing the benefits, or at least the evolutionary necessity, of conflicts beyond all superficial (read: human) input" (48). Winthrop-Young asserts that one explanation for this “polemodicy” is that Kittler (as Heidegger and others) "regretted the inability of Germany to pursue an alternate third way—neither West nor East—after 1945" (48).
Given the fact that Kittler's work undoubtedly influenced the constitution of media theory as an institutional academic discipline in Germany (Peters, 2008), this polemodicy of war and its intersection with media development is particularly relevant for understanding the so-called German Media Theory (Winthrop-Young, 2006). Given the (correctly) established understanding of cultural techniques as operations (Duenne et al., 2020; Siegert, 2015; Krajewski, 2013; Winthrop-Young, 2013), the long-standing etymology of cultural techniques (Kulturtechniken) may not be as fruitful for a self-reflection of media studies, compared to its understanding under the direct prediction of war technologies, expressed by Kittler in post-1945 Germany. Titled after Kittler's essay “Unternehmen Walhall” (Kittler 1987), the volume is excellently named and will enrich contemporary and global discourse with the challenging thoughts and surprising thematic relationships embedded within his broader theories. Operation Valhalla: Writings on War, Weapons, and Media can also serve as a building block to improve the general (self-)research of media theory, which often means the research of social theory and war.
References
Bertuch FJ and Kraus GM (2016) Introduction to the Journal of Luxury and Fashion (1786, trans. G Winthrop-Young). Cultural Politics 12(1): 23–31. DOI: 10.1215/17432197-3436295.
Duenne J, Fehringer K, Kuhn K, et al. (eds) (2020) Cultural Techniques: Assembling Spaces, Texts, and Collectives. Boston: De Gruyter.
Kittler FA (1981) Ottilie Hauptmann. In: Bolz NW (ed.) Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften: Kritische Modelle und Diskursanalysen zum Mythos Literatur. Hildesheim, Gerstenberg. 260–275.
Kittler FA (1986) Grammophon, Film, Typewriter. Berlin: Brinkmann & Bose.
Kittler FA (1987) Unternehmen Walhall. In: Storch W (ed.) Die Nibelungen: Bilder von Liebe, Verrat und Untergang. Munich: Prestel 62–63.
Kittler FA (1991) Dichter, Mutter, Kind. Munich: Fink, 119–148.
Kittler FA (1999) Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (trans. M Wutz and G Winthrop-Young). Writing science. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.
Krajewski M (2013) The Power of Small Gestures: On the Cultural Technique of Service. Theory, Culture & Society 30(6): 94–109. DOI: 10.1177/0263276413488961.
Krämer S and Bredekamp H (2013) Culture, Technology, Cultural Techniques – Moving Beyond Text (trans. M Wutz). Theory, Culture & Society 30(6): 20–29. DOI: 10.1177/0263276413496287.
Macho T (2013) Second-Order Animals: Cultural Techniques of Identity and Identification (trans. M Wutz). Theory, Culture & Society 30(6): 30–47. DOI: 10.1177/0263276413499189.
Peters JD (2008) Strange Sympathies: Horizons of German and American Media Theory. In: Kelleter F and Stein D (eds) American Studies as Media Studies. Heidelberg: Winter, pp. 3–23.
Siegert B (2015) Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors, and Other Articulations of the Real (trans. G Winthrop-Young). New York: Fordham University Press.
Vismann C (2008) Files: Law and Media Technology (trans. G Winthrop-Young). Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.
Winthrop-Young G (2006) Cultural Studies and German Media Theory. In: Hall G and Birchall C (eds) New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory. Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press, 88–104.
Winthrop-Young G (2013) Cultural Techniques: Preliminary Remarks. Theory, Culture & Society 30(6): 3–19. DOI: 10.1177/0263276413500828.
Fabian Lorenz Winter is a research assistant in Media Studies (Chair: Archival and Literary Studies) at Bauhaus-University Weimar. His Ph.D. project deals with letter copying books between 1800 and 1900 (Das Briefkopierbuch als Archiv. Geschichte, Ästhetik, Theorie). His research also focuses on media aesthetics, cultural writing techniques, and archival studies. He recently published “Impressionen: Das Briefkopierbuch als kleines Archiv” in Archiv für Mediengeschichte (19/Kleine Formen; forthcoming 2021) and “Pharmakon und Formation: Aby Warburgs Ordnungsformate der Psyche” in Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft (12/1; 2020, pp. 31–41).
Email: fabian.winter@uni-weimar.de
