List Cultures

Inspired by the ubiquity of rankings, bullet points, and registries in contemporary 'list culture' and by Jack Goody's famous question 'What's in a list?' (1977), this book explores the list as a cultural and communicative form. It traces the list through a variety of contexts in an anarchaeological wandering (Zielinski) that reveals aspects of its role and function in human thought and action. I ask: how can this seemingly innocuous form be studied? What does its analysis tell us about historical and contemporary media environments and logistical networks? What can studying this unconventional object bring to Media Studies? The book contributes to contemporary debates around New Materialism and the post- or non-human turn. It is one of the first books from English-speaking Media Studies to offer a serious engagement with German theories of cultural techniques. In connecting these to Anglo-American approaches that address similar issues, the book provides an alternative engagement with German media theory for English audiences that have previously been exposed primarily to the more technical German tradition of Friedrich Kittler and Wolfgang Ernst.