#kittler

Discourse analysis practices a ‘joyful positivism.’ It accords not even a relative autonomy to philosophical discourse. It does not deal with the one Urschrift which every metaphysics of presence has supposedly forgotten, but rather with the many forgotten techniques which were invented to counteract forgetting.

–Kittler, “Forgetting”

The methodological hypothesis of discourse analysis is as simple as that. It presupposes forgetting and disappearance, disintegration and erosion precisely where philosophy decreed presence and retaining. Such simplemindedness has its advantages. It is only against the background of disappearance without return that the techniques and institutions which produce or insure a certain permanence can appear in their specificity.

– Kittler, “Forgetting”