"Ich werde ganz einfach telegraphieren" — Subjekte, Telegraphie, Autonomie und
Fortschritt in Theodor Fontanes Gesellschaftsromanen
Electronic media influence our thoughts and behaviours. Our present situation resembles
that of the industrial world in the late nineteenth century, when electrical telegraphy, the
precursor of today's media technologies, gained a dominant position in
telecommunications. In our day, conditioning prevents us from reaching a deeper
understanding of our relationship to technical media. Because electrical media were still
new in the late nineteenth century, observers then were more readily able to analyse their
effects and to recognize potentials of subjects in their accounts. In Germany the writer
Theodor Fontane demonstrated through depictions in his late novels of society that, by
reflecting on the nature of the self and its relation to telegraphy and concomitant
ideologies, subjects have the capacity to become aware not only of factors that control
them, but also of their autonomous potentials. This consciousness provides the basis for
their self-empowerment in the use of telegraphy. However, because Fontane critically
depicts Wilhelminian society, his protagonists only attain this level of Consciousness in
isolated instances. Its realisation is continuously achieved through Fontane's narrative
depiction and its reconstruction by the readers. The image of the subject and its
potentials that emerges in this reconstruction provides valuable insights applicable also to
evaluations of our present media involvement. Contrary to a wide-spread belief as to
subjects'powerlessness and insignificance, our findings imply that the position of
subjects in relation to media can be described more positively.
Fontane's depiction is concentrated in three identifiable areas, in which the
conjunction of telegraphy and ideology exerts a controlling influence on subjects. In
accordance with this focus our study examines the views of nature and technology as
fateful forces, the alteration of time- and space experiences, and the construction of
German, foreign and technical cultures.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/13565 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Thomas, Christian Erik |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | Other |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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