Chapter 28 - Media Theory

Summary

In order to outline W.G. Sebald’s perspective on media technology, it is instructive to consider the similarities between Sebald and Friedrich Kittler, who is generally considered the founding father of German Media Theory. Sebald’s use of the photocopier – in order to intentionally degrade the images used in his works – is reminiscent of Kittler’s interest in ‘noise’, i.e. disturbances that distort the information a medium is supposed to relay. Also, the portrayals of visual apparatuses in Sebald’s texts – as found in painting, photography, film, and video – often focus on these disturbances or ‘noise.’ The reader’s attention is thus directed away from the medial messages and onto the materialities involved in conveying them. Furthermore, Sebald’s descriptions of photography, film, and video repeatedly illustrate how medial noise intereferes with practices of memory. Against this background, media technologies in Sebald appear as a transitory and stubborn materiality which refuses to convey universal meaning.