WIN $150 GIFT VOUCHERS: ALADDIN'S GOLD

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

Code

From Information Theory to French Theory

Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan

$306.95   $245.50

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

QTY:

English
Duke University Press
20 January 2023
In Code Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan reconstructs how Progressive Era technocracy as well as crises of industrial democracy and colonialism shaped early accounts of cybernetics and digital media by theorists including Norbert Wiener, Warren Weaver, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Claude Levi-Strauss, Roman Jakobson, Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, and Luce Irigaray. His analysis casts light on how media-practical research forged common epistemic cause in programs that stretched from 1930s interwar computing at MIT and eugenics to the proliferation of seminars and laboratories in 1960s Paris. This mobilization ushered forth new fields of study such as structural anthropology, family therapy, and literary semiology while forming enduring intellectual affinities between the humanities and informatics. With Code, Geoghegan offers a new history of French theory and the digital humanities as transcontinental and political endeavors linking interwar colonial ethnography in Dutch Bali to French sciences in the throes of Cold War-era decolonization and modernization.
By:  
Imprint:   Duke University Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm, 
Weight:   499g
ISBN:   9781478016366
ISBN 10:   1478016361
Series:   Sign, Storage, Transmission
Pages:   272
Publication Date:  
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan is Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Digital Media at King’s College London.

Reviews for Code: From Information Theory to French Theory

"“Straying away from the familiar itineraries of intellectual history, Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan invites us to take a path less trodden: a detour that allows the reader to revisit famous milestones in the development of cybernetics and digital media, and to connect them to scholarly debates stemming from fields of study as distant as structural anthropology, family therapy, and literary semiology."" * The Duke Reader * “Bernard Geoghegan’s Code presents a strong history of how the humanities of the 20th century worked in close connection with communication and information sciences … a rich and insightful analysis.”  -- Jussi Parikka * Leonardo Reviews * ""Anyone interested in the political and ethical dimensions of cybernetics and contemporary social networking will be fascinated by Geoghegan's rich historical and interpretive account of these important and timely subjects. Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students and faculty. Students in two-year technical programs."" -- J. W. Dauben * Choice * ""Geoghegan’s rich and surprising account of the common inheritance shared by information theory and French Theory in the era of liberal technocracy, industrial capitalism, and colonial crisis will change how we think about the nature, risks, and possibilities of data analytics, critical theory, and the digital humanities now and for years to come."" -- Carolyn Pedwell * Theory, Culture & Society *"


See Also