Review:

Towards a new media archaeology? A report on some books and tendencies

Over the last few years media archaeology has become an accepted method of research and has attracted an increasing number of scholars. Beginning in the 1980s with Friedrich Kittler’s groundbreaking books AUFSCHREIBESYSTEME (Discourse Networks) and GRAMMOPHON, FILM, TYPEWRITER, then continuing in the 1990s with Siegfried Zielinski who used the term ‘Medienarchäologie’ for the first time in its full methodological sense, one might say media archaeology is booming. Following Michel Foucault’s studies on the formations of knowledge, media archaeology tries to reveal the various epistemological conditions that point to the emergence of media and probes for breaks and non-continuities in their history. Not surprising then, the emergence of cinema is one of its preferred objects – German Medientheorie (media theory) as well as Anglo-Saxon new film history share an interest in the interchanging scientific and cultural discourses of the 19th century and the arising mass culture.