The Language and Poetics of Machines

The intelligibility of mechanical processes lends a peculiar expressive power to the machine. It is manifested throughout the history of human culture from Heron of Alexandria to La Mettrie and contemporary conceptions of cellular machines. The machines of Karl Marx, Ernst Kapp, Eduard Jan Dijktserhuis, or Lewis Mumford reflect the development of Western thought, while the perpetuum mobile or the soft machines of nanotechnology represent unattainable dreams of reason. And then there are the machines of Jean Tinguely, Tomi Ungerer, or Rube Goldberg that whimsically undermine the notions that machines need to be useful. All of this may refer to a compositional grammar of mechanical elements which was proposed by Christopher Polhem in the 16th century and elaborated 300 years later, e.g., by Franz Reuleaux or Carl Bach, and subsequently reflected by Anson Rabinbach or Georges Canguilhem. However, the language of machines and machine language is never free of power relations, especially in the 20th century. Machine language partly reflects and stabilizes topographical and gendered differences. This special issue gathers several key works to explore the theme of “Machines and Language.” We examine this topic through three dimensions: gender, capital, and culture. Our goal is to investigate the ongoing tension between technological discourse and humanistic thought. By viewing the machine through the prism of language, we reveal a complex spectrum of power, desire, and meaning