Sebastian Giessmann. The Connectivity of Things. Network Cultures since 1832. The MIT Press. 2024
Chapter Reviewed: Introduction: Getting Caught Up
Review by: Nazua Idris, PhD Candidate in Literary Studies, Washington State University
“Getting Caught Up” is the introductory chapter of Sebastian Giessmann’s The Connectivity of Things: Network Cultures since 1832. This chapter sets the tone of the book, offers an overview of Giessmann’s methodology, and provides a brief summary of the chapters. Giessmann begins the chapter with a rhetorical question: “What is the truth about the network?” (1). He argues that the “material purpose” of the networks hardly receives any attention in the study of networks (1). Thus, as the writer claims, this book explores the missing points in earlier conversations about networks and presents how the “net” has been “spun into a network” by tracing “the historical episodes that illustrate the human, nonhuman, natural, and artificial qualities of networks” (1). To provide the readers with a historical understanding of the development of “network” into a cultural technique, his methodology involves exploring the intersections of “the practices, techniques, and technologies that produce, operate, and maintain nets and networks” (3). The focus of his theoretical framework is different from the frameworks used by other scholars to study networks, for example, Actor-network theory (ANT) or Social Network Analysis (SNA), as he is interested in exploring the “interplay of differences” and genealogical semblances “across extremely varied networks” (3). Giessmann further explains how his focus is different from other scholars who previously studied networks. He informs the readers that other scholars have approached the history of networks from various schools of thought, including “the sociology of technology, philosophy, literary studies, and architectural history” (6).
L’industria di Archimede or Dialettica o Industria by Paolo Veronese, 1575–1577
However, two of the guiding questions of his book are––“How does net turn into a “quasi-object” and “epistemic thing”? . . . [H]ow it is that nets have come to signify networking, which brings actors, material connections, immaterial circulation, aesthetic design, social practices, and political techniques together in the framework of a cultural technique?” (7). Throughout this chapter, he plays with the concepts of net, networking, and network and argues that one cannot approach these words independently because “they are constantly overlapping with, and spilling over into, each other” (6). To expand his arguments with an example, he uses Paolo Veronese’s oil painting Dialettica o Industria, which was created in 1574 and is presently on display in the Sala del Collegio at the Palazzo Ducale in Venice. Giessmann argues that the net portrayed in this painting “stands for a host of cultural techniques” and appraises this painting as being visionary (11). To Giessmann, the image of the net depicted in this painting betokens that “as a material symbol, the net will become the quasi-object representing networks” (11).
As a reader, I felt that Giessmann’s rhetorical move of not spending too much time summarizing the subsequent chapters in this introduction is helpful in sustaining the interest of network enthusiasts and in structuring the book in a way that unfolds various historical narratives about networks as readers move from one chapter to another. This chapter is densely theoretical and intended for audiences who are familiar with the theoretical fields in media and communication. As a reader with a background in literary studies who is not very familiar with the theoretical schools in network or media studies, I had to read the chapter a few times to understand Giessmann’s key arguments.