Annette Bitsch

ICI-Project

A Media History of Migraine
The research project on media history of migraine envisions a decidedly interdisciplinary exploration and survey of this illness. Methodologically, the study will be based on Lacanian psychoanalysis. The disease or rather the phenomenon of migraine will be studied and analysed in regard to different historical and media-theoretical apriorities, as well as in its relationship to the histories of culture, philosophy and science respectively. Migraine (from the Greek hemikranion, hemikrania – hemi-cranium) is an illness of the nervous system which may continue for 4 to 72 hours. Its main symptom is a paroxysmal, pulsating and usually hemilateral headache, which may be accompanied by different and at times disparate symptoms: nausea, vomiting, hypersensitivity towards light and noise, development of edema, backaches, dantesque fatiques, irritability, euphoria. Migraine is a desease or an illness which is in fact fundamentally constituted by the dialectics of tension and catharsis, or, to use the technical terms, arousal and derousal. The dynamics ot these dialectics are observed on all levels of the illness' manifestations: beginning with the superior or main cycle, which will subsume the characteristical syndroms in its periodical re-occurence; on the level of each single progression of one particular seizure, as well as, finally, in every single psychical, neurological, abdonimal, cardiological, nasal etc. symptom. Several theoreticians of migraine correlate its periodicity with the epileptical cycle on the one hand, and the peacefully flowing cycle of sleep-and-waking rhythms on the other, since in migraine an increasing accumulation of stress and tension is always followed by a sudden discharge, which is again followed by a phase of relaxation and recovery. The dialectics of psychical as well as physiological tension and tension-release, of phases of arousal and derousal or inhibition determine the whole seizure: phases of insomnia, panic, mania, overexcitation, oneiric and nightmarish auras will alternate with phases of somnolence, depressive lack of motivation and cataclysmically fed emotions of inner voids and paralysis. The projected book is situated in the overall context of "tension" and, relying on its comprehensive approach, will interrelate different discourses in order to describe the close connection between bodies and media. The diversity and discontinuity of migraine's symptoms — as mentioned above — proves to be appropriate and even predestined to spark off various questions of the physical body. The projected book will pursue and articulate these questions in different ways and in the view of the basic figure of tension and tension-release. The determination of what a body was supposed to be will be evolved on the occasion of selected migraine-theories and various forms of therapy in different historical periods. This study will, for example, show the fundamental differences between show a Cartesian body — that could be anatomically dissected and sytemized in a tableau or grid pattern on the one side and the body as it is conceived in modern biology according to its functions and dynamics (e.g. Bichat). The logics of cybernetics or of genetics will construct a completely different body of feed-back systems or coded information, models surpassed again by non-medical concepts of the body as in psychoanalysis. Affilliated with this issue is the set of problems concerning the relation between mind and body. It has to be observed though that in the most advanced cybernetical and neurophysiological discourses, which promise to materialize the sesame of essence, of being and of the mind in the chemistry of neurotrasmitters, a consistent unit of the mind and body is silently assumed. The projected book sets out to subvert this implied unity on the basis of Jacques Lacans distinction between the imaginary and the real body. Based on the diverse and fascinating material, which migraine provides with respect to its etiology, its pathology, its clinical diagnostics and its forms of therapy, the book will give insight into the various and — in their respectiv historical contexts — diversely configurated interfaces between media and bodies.

Vita

seit Oktober 2007 Privatdozentin am Institut für Kulturwissenschaft der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

2007 Habilitation an der Philosophischen Fakultät III der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Kulturwissenschaft)

2005-06 Habilitationsabschlusstipendium von der Frauenförderung der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

1998–2004 Wissenschaftliche Assistentin am Institut für Kulturwissenschaft der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

1997 Promotion an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Kulturwissenschaft)

1993 Erlangung des Magister Artium an der Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germanistik, Anglistik)

Publikationen

"Aleph und Titanic. Jacques Lacans Mengenlehre des Symptoms.", in: Bernd Ternes, Andreas L. Hofbauer, Renate Bauer (Hg.), Einfache Lösungen. Beiträge zur beginnenden Unvorstellbarkeit von Problemen der Gesellschaft. Marburg 2000. S. 186-219.

"Lacan en vogue", in: Kaleidoskopien Heft 3 (324. Körperinformation). Leipzig 2000. S. 258-260.

Always Crashing into the Same Car. Jacques Lacans Mathematik des Unbewussten. Weimar 2001.

"Auf Leben und Tod. Das Gesetz bei Hegel und Lacan.", in: Joseph Vogl et al. (Hg.), Gesetz und Urteil. Weimar 2003. In modifizierter Fassung erneut erschienen in FAKtisch. Festschrift für Friedrich Kittler, Annette Bitsch, Peter Berz und Bernhard Siegert (Hg.), München 2003. S. 313-331.

"George Batailles Heterologie und die Documents." , in deutscher Sprache sowie in russischer Übersetzung erschienen in: Victor Mazin, Joulia Strauss (Hg.), Kabinet. Deutsch-russische Zeitschrift von Freuds Museum der Träume und dem Institut für Psychoanalyse. St. Petersburg 2003. S. 106-153.

FAKtisch. Festschrift für Friedrich Kittler, Annette Bitsch, Peter Berz und Bernhard Siegert (Hg.), München 2003.

"Das Unbewusste der Kybernetik und die Kybernetik des Unbewussten.", in: Cybernetics - Kybernetik. The Macy Conferences 1946-1953. Essays und Dokumente, hrsg. v. Claus Pias. Berlin 2004. S. 153-168.

"Ex Nihilo - Das Spiegelstadium mit Lacan, Dalì und Heidegger.", in: Claudia Blümle, Anne von der Heiden (Hg.), Blickzähmung und Augentäuschung. Zu Jacques Lacans Bildtheorie. Berlin 2005. S. 359-392.

"Psycho-automatische Selbstexperimente im Surrealismus und in der Psychoanalyse.", in: Katrin Solhdju (Hg.), Introspective Self-Rapports. Shaping Ethical and Aesthetic Concepts 1850–2006. Preprint. Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte. 2006. S. 39-50.

"Zwischen Linguistik und Kybernetik. Lacans Diskurs der Psychoanalyse.", in: Michael Franz, Wolfgang Schäffner, Bernhard Siegert und Robert Stockhammer (Hg.), Electric Laokoon. Zeichen und Medien, von der Lochkarte zur Grammatologie. Berlin 2007. S. 270-290.

Die Genealogie des Unbewussten aus der Philosophie und Medientheorie der Zeit. Habilitationsschrift.

"Transfer zwischen McLuhan-Galaxis und Anderem Schauplatz? Ein Versuch zu einer Verbindung der Theorien von Marshall McLuhan und Jacques Lacan.", in: Derrick de Kerckhove, Kerstin Schmidt, Martina Leeker (Hg.), McLuhan wiederlesen. Tagungsband zur McLuhan-Tagung in Bayreuth 14.-17. Februar 2007. Erscheint im Frühjahr 2008.

"Zeit und Gedächtnis im techno-medialen Weltzeitalter. Jacques Lacans Theorie mit Chris Markers 'Sans Soleil'.", in: Axel Volmar (Hg.), Zei(t )kritische Medie[n]prozesse. Chrono-logische Implikationen technischer Medien. Erscheint im Frühjahr 2008.

"Schneeweisschen und Lippenrot. Die Farbe in der Kulturgeschichte der Kosmetik.", in: Annette Geiger (Hg.), Beauty & Style - Mode und Kosmetik als Topos der Kulturwissenschaften. Erscheint im Herbst 2008.

"Nietzsches physiologische Ästhetik: die Konzeption des Körpers als Medium.", in: Renate Reschke (Hg.), Nietzsche: Geschichte und Medien. Nietzscheforschung Band 15 (2008). Akademie-Verlag Berlin. Erscheint 2008.