2. Simondon as a Neo-Scholastic?

Interview with John Durham Peters

Abstract

Johan Fredrikzon spent one and a half years as a visiting research assistant at the Film and Media Studies Program at Yale University 2018/2019. Some months before he arrived, a two-day workshop on Simondon was held by the Yale-Du?sseldorf Working Group on Philosophy and Media, titled Modes of Technical Objects, with scholars from the US and Germany. Fredrikzon decided to engage a few of the workshop participants for this special issue of Sensorium, with the purpose to discuss perspectives on Simondon as a theoretical instrument for thinking technology, how the French philosopher matters in their work, and why there seems to be a revival in the interest in the writing of Simondon these days. On behalf of the Sensorium journal, the interviewer would like to thank the three interviewees for their generous participation.

About John Durham Peters:

John Durham Peters is María Rosa Menocal Professor of English and of Film & Media Studies at Yale University. Peters has been a creative force in media studies for many years and his thinking continues to influence academic environments throughout the world. His book The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media (Chicago, 2015) was an attempt to rethink the concept of media by including weather, dolphins and fire to the infrastructural landscape of digital communications and climate change. His new book, in cooperation with Kenneth Cmiel, is called Promiscuous Knowledge: Information, Image, and Other Truth Games in History (Chicago, 2020).