Theory as Poor Image: Hito Steyerl's Text in Algorithmic Circulation

This article examines the circulation of critical theory in the digital era through an inversion of Hito Steyerl’s argument on “poor images” (2009). While Steyerl describes how images degrade as they circulate, I apply her theory to theoretical knowledge itself, using her essay as a case study. My encounter with the text, mediated by artificial intelligences sixteen years after its publication, reveals phenomena such as algorithmic canonization, machine-readable theory, and retroactive impoverishment. I argue that texts optimized for algorithmic processing gain speed of circulation but risk contextual distrust in later receptions. The analysis confirms Steyerl’s theory recursively: her text on degradation circulates in a degraded form — not by failure, but by confirmation of its own conditions of existence.