Digital Reason

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

• 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 Medium3 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

Engaging, profound and lucid, Digital Reason is recommended for students of the digital but also curious scholars and laypersons.Maaheen Ahmed, IMAGE [&] NARRATIVE, Vol. 22, No.1 (2021)