The Time of Signs

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Notes

¹ A reference to Martin Heidegger's famous phrase ‘Es gibt Sein’ [There is Being] in Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York University Press, 1996). The German phrase literally means ‘It gives Being’, and it is this ‘It’ to which Groys refers in this and subsequent passages. Most importantly, this ‘It’ must not be confused with the Freudian ‘Id’ [translator's note].

² Mana is an anthropological or theological concept commonly understood to signify ‘the stuff of which magic is formed’. Groys appropriates the term mana from Marcel Mauss' seminal study The Gift. The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Ian Cunnison (London: Cohen & West, 1954). Groys frequently uses this concept to denote the seemingly ‘magical’ (since hidden) dimensions of signs, the archive and the medial economy as such [translator's note].

³ In German, the adjective ‘medial’ has two distinct yet nonetheless related meanings depending on context. In a spatial sense, ‘medial’ indicates the middle or in-between position of an object (as it does in English). But ‘medial’ also refers to the realm of mass communication, where it signifies ‘that which pertains to the media’. Groys exclusively uses ‘medial’ in this second sense, but there is no direct equivalent for this term in English. Still, these two meanings of ‘medial’ are related in so far as the media are literally situated ‘in-between’ the sender and the receiver of messages. Therefore, I decided to use the word ‘medial’ in English as well [translator's note].

⁴ The ‘media-ontological suspicion’ refers to the public's anxiety about the inaccessible spatio-temporal dimension that underlies the archive and enables the play of signs on its surface. While we are able to see and interact with this surface-play, the constitutive space underneath remains hidden from view and thus gives rise to fantasies about a hidden agency or subject working to manipulate the archival surface of signs [translator's note].

⁵ Potlatch is another term that Groys appropriates from Marcel Mauss' theory of the gift. An old Indian custom, the potlatch consists in a seemingly aimless expenditure or destruction of goods that exerts social pressure on others to do the same. In Groys' view, the potlatch demonstrates the degree to which economic principles and competition govern all forms of cultural development [translator's note].

⁶ A reference to Jacques Derrida's detailed analysis of Baudelaire's short story ‘Counterfeit Money’, in Jacques Derrida's Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992), which Groys discusses at length in an earlier chapter [translator's note].

⁷ A reference to Groy's detailed analysis of the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss and George Bataille in earlier chapters [translator's note].

⁸ Kenosis is a Greek word for ‘emptiness’ often used in a theological context [translator's note].

⁹ A reference to Jacques Lacan's famous reflections about a can of sardines in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book 11, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1998), which Groys discusses at length in an earlier chapter [translator's note].

¹⁰ For example, such an insinuation can be found in Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, trans. Susan Emanuel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).