Publications by Jake Fraser
MLN, 2023
The world's a book in folio, printed all With God's great works in letters capital: Each creature... more The world's a book in folio, printed all With God's great works in letters capital: Each creature is a page; and each effect A fair character, void of all defect.-Francis Quarles, Emblems Metaphysics has often revealed itself to us to be metaphorics taken at its word.
CR: The New Centennial Review, 2021
One starting point might be the observation that for nearly every technology of recording, there ... more One starting point might be the observation that for nearly every technology of recording, there is a corresponding technique of reversal. From alphabetic palindromes to musical retrogrades, from reverse tape effects or "backmasking" in audio recording to reverse motion in the cinema, up to and including the endless loops, reversals, and inversions of contemporary digital media, it would seem to be a soft law of media history that any medium that can be read or played back can (and will) be read or played backward. My contention in this essay is that this reveals something fundamental about the nature of media temporalities. In what follows, I draw upon German media theorist Friedrich Kittler's notion of "time axis manipulation" to argue that reversals of chronological sequence rely upon recording media's underlying ability to spatialize stretches of time. This
This is a draft intro to the work. Full publication at: Kleist-Jahrbuch (2017), 47-75.
Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 2017
The work is under copyright. Here is a draft intro.
Translations by Jake Fraser
This early essay from German media theorist Friedrich Kittler examines a number of epistemic shif... more This early essay from German media theorist Friedrich Kittler examines a number of epistemic shifts occurring in late 18th-century Germany, anticipating in both methodology and content his groundbreaking 1985 work Aufschreibesysteme [Discourse Networks]. Of primary concern to Kittler here is the invention of what he calls (drawing upon Foucault) the ‘authorship-function’, product of a new constellation of medial, pedagogical and juridical forces. Alongside broader societal transformations (the transition from societies of the law to societies of the norm, the appearance of new sexualities), Kittler documents the emergence of the author in the late 18th century through analyses of new pedagogical practices (including the invention of hermeneutics), changes in childhood alphabetization, and new erotic relationships between authors and their readers.
Talks by Jake Fraser
A rethinking of structuralist and poststructuralist temporal models (above all: bricolage) throu... more A rethinking of structuralist and poststructuralist temporal models (above all: bricolage) through Niklas Luhmann and Talcott Parsons. Remarks on recursion as mode of system differentiation in Kafka.
Papers by Jake Fraser
Uploads
Publications by Jake Fraser
Translations by Jake Fraser
Talks by Jake Fraser
Papers by Jake Fraser