In the German humanities, „media“ are less a subject of research, but a research „paradigm“ in a sense somewhat figuratively adapted from Thomas Kuhn. In other words, media are not considered a real-life phenomenon to be critically observed and analyzed (following a more or less empirical research method). Rather, the concept of „media“ is seen as a theoretical dispositive by itself that allows to put already known artistic and discursive phenomena — from medieval literature to 19th century anatomical research — into a new research perspective. In that respect, „media“ has a conceptual and unifying function for Medialitätsforschung that is equivalent to the notion of „culture“ in British-American cultural materialism and cultural studies.

As such, „media“ has substituted the 19th century notion of „Geist“ - whereas the notion of „culture“ continues to be indebted to Hegel and Marx in its emphasis of human agency and social construction. The German turn from Geistesgeschichte to Mediengeschichte follows the earlier German philosophical turn from metaphysics to ontology, i.e. from Hegel to Heidegger. But what Derrida already observed in the late 1960s, namely that the destruction of metaphysics by its substitution with something else merely continues metaphysics, is true here as well: One grand, abstract historical narrative has been replaced with yet another grand historical narrative that is fairly detached from the common sense understanding of media and, as such, can comfortably avoid to engage with their concrete social, economic, artistic […] issues and practices.

Florian Cramer