The Digital Body: Telegraphy as Discourse Network. (January 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Maddalena, Kate; Packer, Jeremy
• Is Part Of: Theory, culture & society. Volume 32:Number 1(2015:Jan.)
• Page Start: 93
• Page End: 117
• Publication Date: 2015-01
• Subjects: communications theory -- digitalization -- discipline -- Foucault -- Kittler -- media -- war; Social sciences -- Periodicals; 301.05
• DOI: 10.1177/0263276413520620
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0263-2764

Abstract

This article considers the use of flag telegraphy by the US Signal Corps during the Civil War as it functioned as a proto-technical medium that preceded wire telegraphy as a military communications technology. Not only was flag telegraphy a historical step towards contemporary technical media, it was also an early iteration of the digitization of communication. Our treatment ties together three main theoretical threads as a way of seeing 'the digital' in material communication practices: (1) Friedrich Kittler's concept of technical media as a remediation between the 19th and 20th centuries, (2) Foucault's docile bodies as means of reproducing culture, and (3) James Carey's argument that the telegraph reconfigured communication. The Signal Corps is a rich historical moment in terms of media history and history of technology because it illustrates the convergence of historical exigencies at work in the war machine: mobility, secrecy, precision, and speed. Each contributes, we argue, to a digital telos that privileges digital ways of knowing and being.