On the relation between Mallarmé's poetry and contemporary media theory

What is it about?

How do Mallarmé’s writings speak to the present? The present article establishes a dialogue between one of Mallarmé’s early prose poems, Le Démon de l’analogie, and texts by contemporary media theorists Mark Hansen, Steven Shaviro and Eugene Thacker (and some of the philosophers they draw inspiration from: Gilbert Simondon and Alfred North Whitehead). The article argues that Mallarmé’s poem offers an exploration of what is like to be a body modulated by code. It does this in a manner that puts 20th century phenomenology (with it’s focus on human perception) under pressure; instead presenting a very contemporary view of individuation (subject-formation) as being at the same time thoroughly embedded in the environment and very difficult to comprehend and unify. In a final section, the article suggests that Mallarmé’s writings bring together the utopian and the dystopian tendencies that have marked media studies from their inception, and that continue to characterise our relations to the technological object.

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