Eva Geulen: The Post-Digital

Lecture as part of the international conference “What Comes After? The Making and Unmaking of the ‘Post-Age’ ” at the University of St. Gallen, organized by the Department of Philosophy, 13 May 2023

Until recently, the self-image of modernity was marked by powerful concepts emphasizing processuality (modernization, acceleration, aestheticization, scientification, or digitalization). Most of these concepts have been put out of service. Meanwhile, we embrace notions like the “post-digital” and have gotten used to the fact that we live in a post-digital society, even though its implementation is still pending in certain areas (for instance in the German health care system). This paper addresses the question of what is unique about the prefix “post” in “post-digital” and what it has in common with its other occurrences (like in “postmodernity” or “poststructuralism”).

The literary scholar Eva Geulen is the Director of the ZfL, executive board member of the Centers for Advanced Studies in the Humanities Berlin, and Professor for European Culture and the History of Knowledge at the Institute for Cultural History and Theory of the Humboldt University of Berlin.