Re: <nettime> Friedrich A. Kittler, 1943-2011

[J Armitage <j.armitage@northumbria.ac.uk>]

Thanks a lot for this Andreas

[I just sent the below to another list about it]

It is really sad news indeed.

I interviewed Kittler in Berlin for the journal Theory, Culture & Society a few years back.

It was quite an experience. 

After months of careful planning with him about the exact date, time, and place to conduct the interview, I arrived in Berlin only to be told that he had already left for a vacation ... 

4 hours and 20 frantic phone calls later, he finally turned up at his office, still carrying his suitcase ....  

To paraphrase Leonard Cohen's 'Suzanne': he was surely half crazy, but that's certainly why I for one wanted be there.

I will miss him.

The interview is below and online for free these days.

John.
Dr John Armitage
Associate Dean, Professor of Media
Head of Department of Media
Co-editor, Cultural Politics
School of Arts & Social Sciences
Room SQ318d, Squires Building
Northumbria University
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 8ST
(e) (w): j.armitage@unn.ac.uk
(e) (h): j.armitage@technologica.demon.co.uk
(t) BlackBerry: +44 (0)7966977782
(t) Office: +44 (0)191 227 4971
Visit the Cultural Politics website at Duke University Press:
http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?viewby=journal&productid=45645
My latest book, Virilio Now, is currently available from Polity: http://www.politybooks.com/book.asp?ref=0745648770
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/7-8/17.full.pdf+html


>From Discourse Networks
to Cultural Mathematics
An Interview with Friedrich A. Kittler
John Armitage

Discourse Networks

John Armitage: Professor Kittler, I would like to begin this interview by
asking about your youthful scholarly interests. Were they exclusively
concerned with German philosophy? How, for example, did you make your
own transition into the academy?

Friedrich A. Kittler: My youthful intellectual interests were not wholly
involved with German philosophy. However, it is true to say that one of the
main reasons why I attended the University of Freiburg was because of my
reading of the works of Martin Heidegger and because of his connections
with Freiburg. As to my shift into academia, it is perhaps important that
your readers know that I was born in East Germany in 1943 and that I still
have some dim memories of the Second World War and afterwards when the
Red Army was all around. And, of course, in East Germany during the 1940s
and 1950s, it was very difficult to obtain a university education under that
particular government, especially, as in my case, when one's parents were
socially at odds with the regime. That is why my parents left East Germany
in 1958, to give me the chance to have the best German university education
possible. Moreover, this experience probably explains why I was such a keen
student at university and why this separated me to some extent from my
many friends, who simply went there on the understanding that it was their
right to do so, or as a kind of hobby. For, unlike them, I was really engaged
with the university. Yet I am grateful to my father not only for the fact that
I began my life in East Germany but also because I was able to enter the
university system of West Germany.

■ Theory, Culture & Society 2006 (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi),
Vol. 23(7-8): 17-38
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-----Original Message-----

     From: nettime-l-bounces@mail.kein.org      [mailto:nettime-l-bounces@mail.kein.org] On Behalf Of Andreas Broeckmann
     Sent: 19 October 2011 08:46
     To: nettime-l@kein.org
     Subject: <nettime> Friedrich A. Kittler, 1943-2011


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