Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System (Writing

Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System (Writing Science)
- Used Book in Good Condition
This book examines how one aspect of the social and technological situation of literatureâ€•namely, the postal systemâ€•determined how literature was produced and what was produced within literature. Language itself has the structure of a relay, where what is transmitted depends on a prior withholding. The social arrangements and technologies for achieving this transmission thus have had a particularly powerful impact on the imagination of literature as a medium. The book has three parts. The first part reconstructs the postal conditions of classic and Romantic literature: the invention of postage in the seventeenth century, which transformed the postal system into a service meant to be used by the population (instead of by the prince alone); the sexualization of letter writing, which was introduced in the middle of the eighteenth century and changed the reading of a letter into an interpretation of intimate confessions of the soul; and Goetheâ€™s turning of this new ontology of the letter into a logistics of literature whereby literary authorship was constructed by means of postal logistics, with the precision of engineering. The second part analyzes nineteenth-century postal innovations that facilitated communication through letters and examines how literary works were able to live off such communication. These innovations included the reform of the post office; the invention of the postage stamp; the Universal Postal Union, which subjected letter writing to an economy of materials and uniform standards; and the telegraph and the telephone, which surpassed literature in terms of speed, economy, and analog-signal processing. In the third part, on the basis of a close reading of Franz Kafkaâ€™s letters to his typist-fiancÃ©e, the author demonstrates how postal logistics of love and authorship have worked in the era of modern postal systems and technical media. Kafkaâ€™s correspondence is deciphered as a â€œwar of nervesâ€ waged by means of all available techniques and conditions of transmission.
Country USA
Brand Stanford University Press
Manufacturer Stanford University Press
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 13 half-tones
ReleaseDate 1999-06-01
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780804732383

Country	USA
Brand	Stanford University Press
Manufacturer	Stanford University Press
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	13 half-tones
ReleaseDate	1999-06-01
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780804732383

Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System (Writing Science)

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