Dispositif in Media Philosophy or What Kittler Learned from Foucault, and Foucault from Kittler

Abstract

The philosophy of media, although rooted in the reflection on the conceptual problems arising from the use of technologies, represents the general examination of questions related to the theory and practice of mediation. Based on the concept of the dispositive, the article explores the conceptual affinities of Michel Foucault’s late work with the work of the main co-creator of the techno-materialist version of media philosophy Friedrich Kittler. The Foucauldian dispositive, composed of discursive and non-discursive elements, is explored as an analogue of Kittlerian discourse networks. The techno-material dimension of the mediation process in Kittler’s theory expands the Foucauldian archive within the material-signifying systems for forming and transmitting this discourse. The article’s central thesis is that through the heuristic notion of the dispositive, the Foucauldian archaeology of knowledge is understood as a Kittlerian archaeology of media since the media situation of our trading with artifacts determines the analysis of épistémè. Kittler’s and Foucault’s work focuses on critiquing the rational Cartesian subject on which conventional philosophical reflection and the anthropocentric narrative are grounded while outlining a fundamental revision of philosophy. Drawing on the Berlin School of media theory (Wolfgang Ernst, Dieter Mersch, Sibylle Krämer, Dionysios Kavvathas), it is argued that we can only have a mediated relationship with ourselves and our environment since the means involved in subjectification have always been technical. The article argues that the two philosophers’ non-anthropocentric or post-humanist stances concern the view of subjectivity as interwoven with the existence of machines and techniques that constantly reconstitute it.