Email and postcards are contrasting material forms of correspondence with distinct affective weight

Evidence

It was in part generated by electronic correspondence between Petit and his two major collaborators: Ian Penman (whose text is voiced by the German actor Hanns Zischler) and the German musician Antye Greie. Penman’s text is a series of reflections on the subject of email, that ‘anonymous yet intimate’ ethereal communication. Some of Penman’s disquisitions on email are accompanied by images of postcards – the poignant tactility of this obsolete form of correspondence all the more affecting because the senders and addressees are now forgotten. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 498

Categorization

• XREF: Postcards as obsolete material correspondence resonates with the hauntology theme of media decay that runs through Fisher’s book and with theories of media archaeology. — connects to: Digital communication transmits affect rather than feeling because affect lacks narrative — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 96

Broader Connections

• Digital communication transmits affect rather than feeling because affect lacks narrative #expands (0.78) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 96