In the Wake of the Odyssey

In: Cultural politics: an international journal ; exploring cultural and political power across the globe, Band 8, Heft 3, S. 413-427

Abstract

Friedrich Kittler's lecture, given in 2007 as part of the series of Mosse-Lectures, follows the recursions of Homer's Odyssey from its original transcription, coinciding with the invention of the Greek alphabet, through history. The stages of this include Virgil's Aeneid, Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Jean-Luc Godard's Le mèpris, and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kittler is concerned with the linkage of poetry, music, and sex from the Greeks to media- and computer-driven modernity.