To begin the seminar, I want to discuss some core terms, to which we’ll repeatedly return. To do so, I’ll draw upon W.J.T. Mitchell’s “Addressing Media” and prompt us to start articulating media and materiality with questions of agency.

If we begin with materialism (including historial materialism’s emphasis on modes of production and productive capacity), then we might ask ourselves whether:

  • Anything is immediate, including experience;
  • Any medium is a pure medium;
  • Media are only their material support or base (Mitchell 2008: 3); and
  • Media are only social practices (3; also see Williams, Marxism and Literature). (Here, there’s also Mitchell’s variant, “Is every social practice a medium?” [3])

Following these questions, we might ask how we describe or, better yet, locate media. For instance, if we follow Mitchell’s illustration of the vase (9-10), which I’ll draw on the board, then:

  • Where are object and matter?
  • Where are form and medium?
  • Where are parts and wholes?
  • Where are system and environment?
  • How do systems or forms “face” each other?
  • Where are conduits and containers?
  • Where are frame and portal?
  • Where are vision and illustration?

This discussion will raise a third set of questions, which are more about materiality than media:

  • Where and what are the textures at hand?
  • What escapes? What persists? How does change happen?
  • How do we copy or remediate what’s at hand?
  • How do we address it, and how does it address us? (see Mitchell here)
  • How would we describe it?

It’s really a mess, isn’t it? But I think it’s a mess worth consdering. For now, I just want to conclude with a final question, which is also Mitchell’s:

  • What is the medium of theory? (8)

Throughout this seminar, it will be important to not only describe media and their functions but also ask how theory is imagined, inscribed, expressed, and circulated. For this reason, perhaps the question of theory’s medium is primarily a question about agency (e.g., of writing, working, thinking, settings, experience, and the very materials we use). How does the medium of theory correspond with its agency (e.g., its capacity for change or its persuasiveness)?