Media Pathologies 2. Criticism and Aesthetics of Digitalization as Reflected in the Discourse on Digital Reading

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Nicolas Pethes
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature) ; Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: since 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 413497789

The project continues exploring critical discourses on new media and the aesthetic concepts they imply, which were investigated in phase 1 of the project for the late 18th and early 20th centuries, up to current debates on digital entertainment and reading formats. Instead of aiming at a chronological completion of these discourses, the goal is to focus on the discourse on digitalization with regard to the continuities and ruptures between this discourse and the pathological topoi of earlier media criticism. Attributions of harmful media effects have recently increased because the Corona pandemic was perceived as a catalyst for the spread of digital technologies. Topics such as digital learning in schools and universities, but also the shift of social life to the Internet, have recently received increased attentipn. Contemporary media discourses describe the spread of digital technologies as a historic turn comparable only to the introduction of the printing press – and at the same time as a danger to the cultural relevance of the book. Based on this observation, the project will analyze debates that focus on the consequences of the digital turn for practices of reading and literary aesthetics and warn of a profound cultural change. In a first step, the project plans to categorize the critical discourse on the evolution of digital culture, mainly focusing on debates on computer game addiction and excessive 'binging' of series on streaming platforms. The discussion about games and series as new narrative media formats providing an intense immersive potential is of specific interest for the project because these features compete with traditional notions of literature. According to the project’s general hypothesis that by criticizing the dangerous intensity of media effects pathological attributions to the use of media also illuminate the aesthetic potential of the technologies in question, the discourse on reading texts on screens as well as the debate about the transformation of literature in the 'digital age' will be crucial aspects of the research. Its focus will be on the shift that both media technologies and aesthetic references within critical perspectives on new media undergo within the discussion about the consequences of a surface reading tied to digital reading devices as opposed to a book-shaped deep reading of ‘high culture’. As will be shown, the fundamental critique of digital reading is connected to a revaluation of the concept of reading fiction on paper. Discourses about reading and literature, also within literary texts, will therefore be considered as an essential part of contemporary media reflection and media criticism. Based on this assumption, the project will analyze debates about the effects of digital media technologies on current literary concepts on the one hand and the reflection of digital media in contemporary literature on the other hand.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants