Who understands wars better -- the winners or the losers? It has been said that winners write history, but maybe defeat is intellectually more beneficial because losers are under greater pressure to understand their fate than winners. With the centenary of Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West in mind, the talk will look at Spengler's cultural morphology and Friedrich Kittler's media theory as two related, retroactive German attempts to lose world wars better than the other side won them.

Dr. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young is the Department Head of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He teaches in the German and Scandinavian sections of CENES. His initial area of research was the 18th century, but he is now primarily interested in theory issues at the intersection of media theory, theories of evolution and extinction, and cultural techniques. Together with Jussi Parikka and Anna Tuschling, Winthrop-Young edits the new series “Recursions: Theories of Media, Materiality and Cultural Techniques” from Amsterdam University Press.

Part of the Winter Colloquium Series for the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to participate in this event, please contact Germanic Languages & Literatures at 734-764-8018 or germandept@umich.edu