Digital Reason

· Introductory and user-friendly textbook for scholars and students in the humanities
· Multidisciplinary approach to digital culture
· Cross-fertilization of three major perspectives: history of ideas, art, identity and memory studies
· Includes a wide selection of examples and case studies with many suggestions for advanced study and reading

The digital revolution has changed our ways of thinking, working, writing, and living together. In this book the authors critically analyse the ways in which these new technologies have reshaped our world in numerous respects, ranging from politics, ideology, and philosophy over art and communication to memory and identity. The book challenges the customary view of a divide between analogue and digital culture, claiming instead that human endeavour has always been characterised by certain forms and aspects of digital thinking, building, and communicating, and that essential parts of analog culture are still being reshaped by new digital technologies. It offers a multidisciplinary approach to digital reason, reflecting the diversity of humanities scholarship and its fundamental contribution to the ongoing changes in our current and future thinking and doing.

Introduction: We Have Always Been Digital
Part One Mass Meaning 1
Starry Sky and Moral Law The Purpose of Historically Modern Humans Enlightenment and the Public Sphere The Science of Nature and the Science of Humankind Self-interest and Sympathy The Spectacle of Progress and the Machinery of Education
2
Evolution and Culture The “Middle Classes” and “the Masses Below Them” Science and Culture Bildung and Propaganda “A Race Between Education and Catastrophe” Genes, Memes, Imaging and Imagination Big Words
Part Two Medium
3
Media Cultures Medium Theory vs Media Theory Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Stanley Cavell (1926–2018) Remediation, Intermediality, Transmediality and the Others The Digital Turn Medium Archaeology 1
4
Electronic Literature, Internet Art Digital Writing before Electronic Writing Digital-Borne versus Digital-Born The Digital as Cultural Form Digital Culture and “Performation”
5
The Relocation of Digital Writing Expanding and Relocation New = Neo? New Media Writing: Return to Medium-Specificity Back to Print: Still Making Books Thanks to the Digital Turn
6
The Problem of Canonisation in the Digital Era No Place for Canons in Digital Times? The Archival Impulse Saving the Canon Relocating the Digital Void
Part Three Community 7
Digital Politics Digital Mobilisation From Ideology to Issue-based Participatory Politics The Logic of Connective Action Digital Activism and Social Movements
8
Digital Democracy Digital Media and/as the Public Sphere A Private Sphere Twitter and Democracy Anonymous
9
Digital Self The Relational Self and the “Networked Community” Modes of Self-presentation in Digital Media The Self as Text The Selfie
10
The Digital Person, the Panopticon and Kafka Orwell and Kafka
Notes Works Cited
Index Subject Index Index of Names

Jan Baetens

Jan Baetens is professor of Literature and Cultural Studies at KU Leuven.

Ortwin de Graef

Ortwin de Graef is professor of Literature and Cultural Studies at KU Leuven.

Silvana Mandolessi

Silvana Mandolessi is professor of Literature and Cultural Studies at KU Leuven.