New Literary History

Abstract:

This essay tracks cybernetic approaches to the task of hermeneutics. From the first paradigm of cybernetics through its development within contemporary lines of research, the question of information processing evokes problems of interpretation shared by humans and machines. The article discusses Friedrich Kittler's notion of "hermenautics" in the context of disinformation and contemporary politics. This argument draws out connections between scientist Heinz Von Foerster's writings on the ethics of second-order cybernetics and Hannah Arendt's reporting on the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Regimes of disinformation, working to blunt the task of interpretation, are only intensified by the information age. The study of cybernetics can prepare us for the task of adapting hermeneutics to an age of digital dissemination, reading (with) machines.