Wireless
Writing in the Age of Marconi
by Timothy C. Campbell
The University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,
MN, 2006
67 pp., illus. 12 b/w. Trade, $70.50;
paper, $23.50
ISBN: 0-8166-4441-1; ISBN: 0-8166-4422-1.
Reviewed by Jan Baetens
KU Leuven
Faculty of Arts, Blijde Inkomststraat
21, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium
jan.baetens@arts.kuleuven.be
For several reasons, this is an important
book in the field of literature and technology
studies. First of all, it opens a completely
new object of study, which had been confused
until now with the much narrower field
of "radio studies" or "radio
theory". Despite the rapidly increasing
number of publications on the cultural
analysis of technology, the interest in
radio, nowadays an extremely fashionable
object, had never let to the reappraisal
of wireless technology. Yet, the specific
features of wireless transmission and
wireless culture in general, cannot be
denied. In comparison with radio technology,
the wireless prevents from overemphasizing
orality on the one hand, while
stressing the role of inscription
and storage devices on the other
hand (it should therefore not come as
a surprise that Timothy C. Campbell’s
work relies strongly on a Derridean thread).
Second, the book makes also a strong stance
in the field of media theory in general.
Rather than making the impossible choice
between medium-specificity (in
the narrow, almost essentialist and dehistoricized
sense of the word), and media-hybridization
(as postmodern or deconstructive buzzword),
Campbell puts forward the necessary entanglement
and cooperation between various specific
media (here the main reference is not
Derrida but Kittler, although not the
Kittler of the great triadic periodizations,
but the Kittler of the mutual reshaping
of technology driven media).
Besides giving an excellent survey of
our actual knowledge on the history of
the telegraph, in which it foregrounds
the cultural background and the stories
surrounding, Wireless Writing in the
Age of Marconi contains in the very
first place a series of well-conceived
and very illuminating close readings of
some major figures and events of the Marconi-age,
starting from the experiments of the years
1895-1905 and finishing with Ezra Pound’s
Radio Roma broadcasts made from January
1941 to July 1943. In chronological order,
the following landmarks are analyzed:
the invention of radiotelegraphy by Marconi,
the use of wirelessly transmitted speeches
by D’Annunzio during the post-World
War I occupation of Fiume, the notion
of "wireless imagination" in
the futurist writings of Marinetti, and
the long-time companionship between Pound
and the wireless that had started at the
period of the early Cantos.
In each chapter, Campbell is not just
interested in the historical and cultural
context of the authors and the works he
is studying (but even at this level, the
material that he has gathered in his book
is fascinating and constantly surprising).
What he wants to do is tackling a number
of theoretical questions, both in the
field of media theory as in that of literary
studies. Campbell demonstrates very convincingly
the intermedial character of all media,
be it the "immaterial" wireless
transmission technology or the very "old-fashioned"
forms of literary writing. The combination
of the words "wireless" and
"writing" in the title is not
just an easy combination of keywords,
but the very essence of how Campbell sees
technology as well as literature. Wireless
transmission is not dematerialized communication,
but a new way of knitting new and old
technologies together in environments
that multiply their interactions, and
literature is no exception to this rule.
The most speaking (sic) example of this
view is of course Campbell’s global
reinterpretation of Pound’s Cantos,
which he reads in the light of what was
really new in the wireless: the necessity
for the transmitter to create meaning
by manipulating the frequencies of the
otherwise meaningless and conflicting
sound waves that came through the air.
Digging up many unknown or completely
forgotten documents, Campbell’s readings
offer many new insights in the authors
he is studying, and his work encourages
the reader to go back the texts themselves
in order to read them afresh, which is
always the best compliment one can make
to literary or cultural criticism.
At a more historical level, Campbell confronts
also the complex question of the relationships
between technology and fascism. This question
is not new, yet the author manages to
define quite a new approach of it, by
relying exactly on what is the major point
of his work, namely the mutual implication
of writing and technology (of technology
as writing and writing as technology).
Rereading Derrida’s texts on the
"apocalyptic tone" (and on apocalypse
in general) as well as Rudolf Arnheim’s
book on radio (one of the many rediscoveries
that Wireless Writing in the Age of
Marconi helps us to do), Campbell
emphasizes the position of the transmitter
as besieged messenger of an incomprehensible
and irrational message, which cannot be
but a message of death and destruction
addressed to an audience targeted as mastered
by an omnipresent but invisible meaning
that is not to be understood but to be
obeyed and to be acted out.
In short, Wireless Writing in the Age
of Marconi is a challenging but very
rewarding book, which fills in an enormous
lacuna in our knowledge of the first half
of 20th century culture and
whose ideas should become dramatically
useful for new research in the field of
literature and technology studies.
