That Friedrich Kittler's concept of the

was perceived as a provocation by a significant number of German literary scholars may be explained by the inherent challenge that this concept represented for the hermeneutic tradition. As David Wellbery stated in the foreword to the English translation of

, Kittler used “poststructuralist tools” to question a premise of textuality and interpretation that had at the time of the book's first publication become self-evident in most German universities.

The German title, Aufschreibesysteme or “systems of notation” reveals the shift from a focus on the interpretation of texts as the basis for discovering the nature of meaning to a focus on systems for “writing down” culture or, as Kittler puts it,

2396 words

Citation: Griggs, Deborah. "Discourse Networks". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 February 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1649, accessed 21 November 2024.]