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Assembly Codes

The Logistics of Media

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Book

Pages: 264

Illustrations: 23 illustrations

Published: September 2021

Editors: Matthew Hockenberry, Nicole Starosielski, Susan Zieger

Foreword by: John Durham Peters

Contributors: Fred Moten, Ebony Coletu, Shannon Mattern, Liam Cole Young, Ned Rossiter, Michael Palm, Kay Dickinson, Tung-Hui Hu, John Durham Peters, Stefano Harney

The contributors to Assembly Codes examine how media and logistics set the conditions for the circulation of information and culture. They document how logistics—the techniques of organizing and coordinating the movement of materials, bodies, and information—has substantially impacted the production, distribution, and consumption of media. At the same time, physical media, such as paperwork, along with media technologies ranging from phone systems to software are central to the operations of logistics. The contributors interrogate topics ranging from the logistics of film production and the construction of internet infrastructure to the environmental impact of the creation, distribution, and sale of vinyl records. They also reveal how logistical technologies have generated new aesthetic and performative practices. In charting the specific points of contact, dependence, and friction between media and logistics, Assembly Codes demonstrates that media and logistics are co-constitutive and that one cannot be understood apart from the other.

Contributors
Ebony Coletu, Kay Dickinson, Stefano Harney, Matthew Hockenberry, Tung-Hui Hu, Shannon Mattern, Fred Moten, Michael Palm, Ned Rossiter, Nicole Starosielski, Liam Cole Young, Susan Zieger
 

Praise

“Extending vital histories of transportation and communication, this book explores mediation's long dance with logistics. Media are not static: they form via the coordinated movement of materials, the calculating logics of supply chains, and the dynamic activities of networks. Assembly Codes gathers top thinkers who unfurl new paths for understanding media and logistics and boldly confront issues of difference, geopolitics, and planetary resources in the process.” - Lisa Parks, Distinguished Professor of Film & Media Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

“In this exciting volume, leading and innovative scholars outline how logistics brings about new ways of seeing, imagining, and engaging the world as well as the ways in which logistics and media technologies underpin each other. Unparalleled in its conceptual richness and empirical diversity, Assembly Codes makes a major contribution to scholarly debates about logistics and will shape research to come.” - Deborah Cowen, author of The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade

“Assembly Codes addresses a remarkably broad range of logistical and media technologies, with global colonialism and capitalist exploitation at the heart of much of its inquiry. . . . AssemblyCodes presents a host of rich possibilities for interdisciplinary conversation around media, logistics, governance, and the afterlives of data and information that will support vibrant ongoing inquiry.”

- Hannah Hopkins, E3W Review of Books

“[Assembly Codes]’s topically diverse but thematically cohesive contents are broadly accessible and relevant to library, archives, and information workers. Essays range from philosophical to nuts-and-bolts and span analyses rooted in performance studies, media theory, African Studies, and more.” - Lynne Stahl, College & Research Libraries

“All of us are intimately bound to the histories, processes, and oppressions described in Assembly Codes, and it is to the editors’ and authors’ extreme credit that they managed to explore the intricacies of such a fact while maintaining and promoting hope for a better tomorrow.” - Jennessa Hester, H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Matthew Hockenberry is Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University.

Nicole Starosielski is Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University.

Susan Zieger is Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside.

John Durham Peters is Maria Rosa Menocal Professor of English and of Film and Media Studies at Yale University.

Table Of Contents

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Foreword: Some Assembly Required / John Durham Peters  vii
Acknowledgments  xi
Introduction: The Logistics of Media / Matthew Hockenberry, Nicole Starosielski, and Susan Zieger  1
Part I. The Logistical Imagination: Image, Sound, Subject
1. Habits of Assembly / Stefano Harney and Fred Moten  23
→ Storage Solutions [32]
2. "Shipped": Paper, Print, and the Atlantic Slave Trade / Susan Zieger  34
→ Logistical Magic [52]
3. Pan-African Logistics / Ebony Coletu  54
→ The March of Data [73]
4. The Pulse of Global Passage: Listening to Logistics / Shannon Mattern  75
Part II. Logistical Instruments: Efficiency, Automation, Interoperability
→ Beneath the Great White Way [93]
5. Colonization's Logistical Media: The Ship and the Document / Liam Cole Young  94
→ Already Assembled [111]
6. "Every Man within Earshot": Auditory Efficiency in the Time of the Telephone / Matthew Hockenberry  113
→ Logistical Software [130]
7. Logistical Media Theory, the Politics of Time, and the Geopolitics of Automation / Ned Rossiter  132
Part III. Supply Chain Media: Digitization, Globalization, Exploitation
→ "It's Loud and It's Tasteless and I've Heard It Before" [153]
8. Carry That Weight: The Costs of Delivery and the Ecology of Vinyl Records' Revival / Michael Palm  154
→ Sound from a Music Container [169]
9. Supply Chain Cinema, Supply Chain Education: Training Creative Wizardry for Offshored Exploration / Kay Dickinson  171
→ Forklift Cinema [188]
10. The Politics of Cable Supply from the British Empire to Huawei Marine / Nicole Starosielski  190
→ Who Watches the Watchers? [206]
11. Laugh Out Loud / Tung-Hui Hu  207
Selected Bibliography  225
Contributors  235
Index  239

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Sales/Territorial Rights: World

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Additional Information

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Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-1076-0 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-0973-3 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-1303-7 / DOI: https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478013037