Wireless Writing in the Age of Marconi (review)

For several reasons, this is an important book in the field of literature and technology studies. First of all, it opens a completely new object of study, which had been confused until now with the much narrower field of "radio studies" or "radio theory." Despite the rapidly increasing number of publications on the cultural analysis of technology, the interest in radio, nowadays an extremely fashionable object, has never led to the reappraisal of wireless technology. Yet, the specific features of wireless transmission and wireless culture in general, cannot be denied. In comparison with radio technology, the wireless prevents overemphasis on orality on the one hand while stressing the role of inscription and storage devices on the other hand (it should therefore not come as a surprise that Timothy C. Campbell's work relies strongly on a Derridean thread). Second, the book also takes a strong stance in the field of media theory in general. Rather than making the impossible choice between medium specificity (in the narrow, almost essentialist and dehistoricized sense of the word), and media hybridization (as postmodern or deconstructive buzzword), Campbell puts forward the necessary entanglement and cooperation between various specific media (here the main reference is not Derrida but Kittler, although not the Kittler of the great triadic periodizations but the Kittler of the mutual reshaping of technology-driven media).

Besides giving an excellent survey of our actual knowledge on the history of the telegraph, in which it foregrounds the cultural background and the surrounding stories, Wireless Writing in the Age of Marconi contains in the very first place a series of well-conceived and very illuminating close readings of some major figures and events of the Marconi age, starting from the experiments of the years 1895-1905 and finishing with Ezra Pound's Radio Roma broadcasts made from January 1941 to July 1943. In chronological order, the following landmarks are analyzed: the invention of radiotelegraphy by Marconi, the use of wirelessly transmitted speeches by D'Annunzio during the post-World War I occupation of Fiume, the notion of "wireless imagination" in the Futurist writings of Marinetti and the longtime companionship between Pound and the wireless that started at the period of the early Cantos.

In each chapter, Campbell is not just interested in the historical and cultural context of the authors and the works he is studying (but even at this level, the material that he has gathered in his book is fascinating and constantly surprising). What he wants to do is tackle a number of theoretical questions, both in the field of media theory and in that of literary studies. Campbell demonstrates very convincingly the intermedial character of all media, be it the "immaterial" wireless transmission technology or the very "old-fashioned" forms of literary writing. The combination of the words "wireless" and "writing" in the title is not just an easy combination of keywords, but the very essence of how Campbell sees technology as well as literature. Wireless transmission is not dematerialized communication, but a new way of knitting new and old technologies together in environments that multiply their interactions, and literature is no exception to this rule. The most speaking (sic) example of this view is of course Campbell's global reinterpretation of Pound's Cantos, which he reads in the light of what was really new in the wireless: the necessity for the transmitter to create meaning by manipulating the frequencies of the otherwise meaningless and conflicting sound waves that came through the air. Digging up many unknown or completely forgotten documents, Campbell's readings offer many new insights into the authors he is studying, and his work encourages the reader to go back to the texts themselves in order to read them afresh, which is always the best compliment one can make to literary or cultural criticism.

At a more historical level, Campbell confronts also the complex question of the relationships between...