Stirrings in the Archives: Order from Disorder,

摘要

A sequence of 24 short but pithy ruminations make up this book. Only 97 pages in total, it packs a punch. Ernst is Professor of Media Theory at Humboldt University of Berlin and described in the book blurb as a cultural and media historian. His work has only been available in English since 2013. This book is a translation by Adam Siegel of his Das Rumoren der Archive. Ordnung aus Unordnung from 2002. Its appearance in English, 13 years after its publication in German, is representative of the increasing attention his work is attracting mainly through reference by other scholars loosely grouped under the umbrella of media archaeology. Ernst has a particular interest in the French metaphysical conceptualisation of the archive filtered through his own cultural background in the German-Prussian archival science tradition. In Ernst's articulation, media archaeology looks to uncover the administrative traces of records creation, formation and organisation. This contrasts to the often more limited attention by some media scholars who tend to focus only on the elements of physicality of media. His work is situated within the much broader stream which is often called 'the archival turn.