This Is Enlightenment

Debates about the nature of the Enlightenment date to the eighteenth century, when Imanual Kant himself addressed the question, “What is Enlightenment?” The contributors to this ambitious book offer a paradigm-shifting answer to that now-famous query: Enlightenment is an event in the history of mediation. Enlightenment, they argue, needs to be engaged within the newly broad sense of mediation introduced here—not only oral, visual, written, and printed media, but everything that intervenes, enables, supplements, or is simply in between. With essays addressing infrastructure and genres, associational practices and protocols, this volume establishes mediation as the condition of possibility for enlightenment. In so doing, it not only answers Kant’s query; it also poses its own broader question: how would foregrounding mediation change the kinds and areas of inquiry in our own epoch? This Is Enlightenment is a landmark volume with the polemical force and archival depth to start a conversation that extends across the disciplines that the Enlightenment itself first configured. Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 12 This Is Enlightenment: An Invitation in the Form of an Argument......Page 14 MEDIATION: A CONCEPT IN HISTORY......Page 48 Enlightening Mediation - John Guillory......Page 50 Where Were the Media before the Media? Mediating the World at the Time of Condillac and Linnaeus - Knut Ove Eliassen and Yngve Sandhei Jacobsen......Page 77 Mediation and the Division of Labor - Peter de Bolla......Page 100 Transmitting Liberty: The Boston Committee of Correspondence’s Revolutionary Experiments in Enlightenment Mediation - William Warner......Page 115 Modes and Codes: Samuel F.B. Morse and the Question of Electronic Writing - Lisa Gitelman......Page 133 ENLIGHTENMENT: EVIDENCE AND EVENTS......Page 150 Mediating Information, 1450 – 1800......Page 152 Mediated Enlightenment: The System of the World......Page 177 Romanticism, Enlightenment, and Mediation: The Case of the Inner Stranger......Page 186 The Present of Enlightenment: Temporality and Mediation in Kant, Foucault, and Jean Paul......Page 202 The Strange Light of Postcolonial Enlightenment: Mediatic Form and Publicity in India......Page 222 PROLIFERATION: MEDIATION AND PRINT......Page 240 Mediating Media Past and Present: Toward a Genealogy of “Print Culture” and “Oral Tradition” - Paula McDowell......Page 242 Mediating Antiquarians in Britain, 1760– 1830: The Invention of Oral Tradition, or, Close Reading before Coleridge - Maureen McLane......Page 260 Mediating le philosophe: Diderot’s Strategic Self- Representations - Anne Fastrup......Page 278 Novel Knowledge: Judgment, Experience, Experiment - John Bender......Page 297 The Piratical Enlightenment - Adrian Johns......Page 314 EFFECTS: EMERGENT PRACTICES......Page 334 Financing Enlightenment, Part One: Money Matters - Mary Poovey......Page 336 Financing Enlightenment, Part Two: Extraordinary Expenditure - Ian Baucom......Page 349 “The Horrifying Ties, from which the Public Order Originates”: The Police in Schiller and Mercier - Bernhard Siegert ......Page 370 The Preacher’s Footing - Michael Warner......Page 381 Mediation as Primal Word: The Arts, the Sciences, and the Origins of the Aesthetic - Michael McKeon......Page 397 Notes......Page 426 References......Page 452 List of Contributors......Page 488 Index......Page 492 Debates about the nature of the Enlightenment date to the eighteenth century, when Imanual Kant himself addressed the question, “What is Enlightenment?” The contributors to this ambitious book offer a paradigm-shifting answer to that now-famous query: Enlightenment is an event in the history of mediation. Enlightenment, they argue, needs to be engaged within the newly broad sense of mediation introduced here—not only oral, visual, written, and printed media, but everything that intervenes, enables, supplements, or is simply in between. With essays addressing infrastructure and genres, associational practices and protocols, this volume establishes mediation as the condition of possibility for enlightenment. In so doing, it not only answers Kant’s query; it also poses its own broader question: how would foregrounding mediation change the kinds and areas of inquiry in our own epoch? __This Is Enlightenment__ is a landmark volumewith the polemical force and archival depth to start a conversation that extends across the disciplines that the Enlightenment itself first configured. Debates about the nature of the Enlightenment date to the eighteenth century, when Immanuel Kant himself addressed the question, 'What is Enlightenment'? The contributors to this ambitious book offer a paradigm-shifting answer to that now-famous query: Enlightenment is an event in the history of mediation. Enlightenment, they argue, needs to be engaged within the newly broad sense of mediation introduced here - not only oral, visual, written, and printed media, but everything that intervenes, enables, supplements, or is simply in between. With essays addressing infrastructure and genres, associational practices and protocols, this volume establishes mediation as the condition of possibility for enlightenment. In so doing, it not only answers Kant's query; it also poses its own broader question: how would foregrounding mediation change the kinds and areas of inquiry in our own epoch? This Is Enlightenment is a landmark volume with the polemical force and archival depth to start a conversation that extends across the disciplines that the Enlightenment itself first configured

Debates about the nature of the Enlightenment date to the eighteenth century, when Immanuel Kant himself addressed the question, “What is Enlightenment?” The contributors to this ambitious book offer a paradigm-shifting answer to that now-famous query: Enlightenment is an event in the history of mediation. Enlightenment, they argue, needs to be engaged within the newly broad sense of mediation introduced here—not only oral, visual, written, and printed media, but everything that intervenes, enables, supplements, or is simply in between. With essays addressing infrastructure and genres, associational practices and protocols, this volume poses its own broader question: how would foregrounding mediation change the kinds and areas of inquiry in our own epoch?

This Text Is A Volume With The Polemical Force And Archival Depth To Start A Conversation That Extends Across The Disciplines That The Enlightenment Itself First Configured. The Essays Address Infrastructure And Genres, Associational Practices And Protocols, And Much More. Edited By Clifford Siskin And William Warner. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 413-477) And Index.